According to the London School of Economics, even the highest paid people in the country – the top 1% – don’t feel particularly well-off. This is because they compare themselves with the 0.1% super rich - one usually works for the other.
Similarly John McDonnell caused outrage a few weeks ago when he defined those earning more than £70,000 or more as ‘the rich’. Neuroscientists wouldn’t be surprised. It’s all relative.
This relationship between salary change and how rich you feel is reflected in the biology of perception. In particular how we perceive the intensity of sound. A step up in volume will appear to make less difference to a louder sound than a quieter one.
Sounds are measured in decibels, a logarithmic way of describing a ratio – to get the same increase in perceived volume, you’ve got to work much harder for louder sounds than quieter ones. What counts as louder in a library is very different to what counts as louder in a rock concert.
It might be helpful if we had the equivalent of decibels to measure wealth, or at least to explain our attitudes to it.
Dr Daniel Glaser is director of Science Gallery at King’s College London
