Psychophysics has discovered a law called the Weber-Fechner Law which can demonstrate the different perceptions of the rich and the poor.  It proves what we already knew: that a little stimulus change means a great deal when you have almost nothing, and very little when you have an excess.  A single dollar does not create the same emotional appreciation to a wealthy person as to a poor person.

Imagine you are in a closed room with a single lightbulb and a controller that can make small changes in the light intensity.  If the light is initially very dim and you increase or decrease the intensity just enough for you to notice a change from the original brightness, that change in intensity is called the Just Noticeable Difference (JND).  If you then make the initial light very bright and do the same slight adjustments until you notice the change, you then have another JND.  The value of the two JNDs is not the same.  The JND when starting from a large intensity is greater than if you start from a small intensity. Larger changes are required to make a meaningful difference in bright light.  If we have a small sensory base level (dim light), it takes less of an increase or decrease for us to notice a change.  This is true for a large number of our sensory modalities; seeing, hearing, touching, temperature, etc.  This is one of the few laws of psychology.  It was discovered by Ernst Weber and developed into a law by Gustav Fechner in 1860.  Fechner is known as the father of Experimental Psychology.  He thought that he had solved the infamous mind-body problem, expressing it in a mathematical formula (S=K ln I; where S is sensation {mind}, I is stimulus Intensity {body}, ln represents the natural logarithm, and K is a constant).  This formula is inscribed on his tombstone.

With money and with government influence of the economy, how do we increase population well-being, while maximizing the utility of resources? How do we keep the profit motive alive while providing aid to the needy?  This law may provide a partial answer to these questions.

This law also applies to wealth.  A poor person will notice a small increase or decrease in wealth, while it takes a much larger change to make a similar difference to a wealthy person.  Increases in wealth are experienced as positive emotions while losses are depressing.  If a government has a limited resource and wishes to improve the well-being of a population, this law would instruct them to give to poor people.  Thereby creating more positive emotions per unit of resource.  The resource can be money, food, shelter, security or anything which will be perceived with emotion.  Trickle-down manipulations are second order inefficient methods of increasing population positive emotions.  Economic stimulation to improve the population’s well-being is best achieved by aiding the poor.  If you wish to efficiently use a limited resource, and avoid spoilage or misuse, you should provide it to those who will appreciate it the most.  Thus the cost of a single apple, for example, should be less than the per unit price of a large quantity purchase.  A profit may be realized if the large purchase (wholesale) at a higher per unit price is followed by a ‘value added’ process.  In the example of apples the ‘value added’ process could be baking an apple pie, of preserving the apples for storage.  This is different from the economic model of producing a profit by buying in large quantity and selling in small units.  In the JND model the large quantity purchase of a commodity must be accompanied with a ‘value added’ process to produce a profit.

A mature Psychology science is expected to use scientific discoveries to aid people in psychological distress.  An ethical educational system is expected to encourage and perpetuate ethical behaviors.  A viable spiritual leadership is expected to guide people into virtuous directions.

Many discoveries in Psychology have been applied in ways to effectively decrease population well-being.  Discoveries in addiction behavior have been used to increase irrational desires for products and services.  Discoveries in attractiveness perception have been used in advertising to increase sales and encourage discontent and reduced self appreciation.  Discoveries in greed have been used to encourage insatiable consumption and producing more greed.  Discoveries in aggressive behavior and hostility have been used to support competition and bully wars.  JND discoveries are being used to slightly decrease the size of a product’s container, thereby increasing the profit.  We are educated to accept these manipulation as ‘smart business’ and to see it as a commendable application of science and understanding.  Our economic and ethical principals reward this inhumane behavior.  Perhaps an educational change is warranted as well as a maturing of the science of Psychology.  More needs to be said of the responsibilities of our spiritual leadership.

We must anticipate that a growing wealth gap and the movement of large groups of people from middle class to lower class will produce an unhealthy response from the disenfranchised.  The assumption of equal emotional appreciation to an equal quantity money is not fair to the poor.  A given quantity of money means much more to a poor person.  Consider what it would be like if the poor were to behave as if equal emotional exchanges were the norm.  A poor person would be willing to risk almost everything to gain the necessities of life.  This does not produce a healthy society.

A government must keep in mind that in gambling (which may be hidden, but present in most human activities) it is possible for a wealthy person to ‘buy the pot’ with a bet well beyond the JND of a poor person, while meaning much less to them.  Honest betting may be closer to ‘percentage of wealth’ wagers.  This may be the motivation behind the wealthy doing all they can to discourage the ‘bet it all’ mentality, where the poor attempt to create a level playing field through insurrection.  

There is a new branch of the literature on public finance hypothesizing that the Weber–Fechner law can explain the increasing levels of public expenditures in mature democracies. Election after election, voters demand more public goods to be effectively impressed; therefore, politicians try to increase the magnitude of this “signal” of competence (the size and composition of public expenditures) in order to collect more votes.

And the lightbulb comes on!