They will also have many ideological weaknesses, but one thing must be said of Americans: when it comes to giving grants, they are less suspicious of us. From stars like Sean Penn, committed to helping victims of Hurricane Katrina and the earthquake victims in Haiti, billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who will leave no legacy to the family but to charitable foundations, for the American people pay money without being able to how they are managed is a normal thing. The donation to organizations and associations, for them, does not equate to a possible scam, but it is the very essence of doing charity, because disinterested. The subject is no shortage of wealthy in Europe, but almost never donate the assets to organizations of this type. And when they do, as in the case of Ikea owner Mel Simon, to push it's more the lack of consideration of the legitimate heirs.

But what not everybody knows is that even the poor in the U.S., to make a lot of charitable non-profit organizations. The University of Berkeley has even shown that this type of generosity is a value that belongs more to them than to billionaires. This is because, say scientists at the prestigious Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, those who have little to lose you more confidence, and trust is an essential element when you donate your savings to those who do not know personally.

Trust in the near and magnanimity are, according to researchers in California, directly proportional values: the one who also owns the other, regardless of social status, genes and culture. The researcher Paul Piff, among the leading experts in American social psychology, has 115 volunteers subjected to a "trust game", one of the three main tests of game theory, showing that just those who are less affluent are willing to risk to help an economically 'other person. While not knowing and not knowing how to use that money.

In the poor lack the fear - typical of the rich - of losing everything and being deceived. Piff and his team have understood by asking the volunteers to decide whether to donate or not to strangers 10 fees, that at the end of the experiment were converted into cash. The most generous were the poorest, while vontari affluent, educated by the family to distrust, they kept most of the chips themselves. In particular, the richest 2.1% of respondents stated that it would willingly donated much of their money, compared to 5.6% of lower-class volunteers.

Research at the University of California at Berkeley is the first of its kind ever made and, unlike other studies 1, highlights a particular aspect of generosity, the uncertainty linked to the total success of the gesture and the ability to trust the next . And 'therefore much more likely to be a poor man to adopt a child from a distance than a rich, precisely because the latter was educated at the suspect and the preservation of external threats.

"Nor is it a case - says Professor Paolo Legrenzi, professor of cognitive psychology at the University IUAV of Venice and author of Neuro-mania. The brain does not explain who we are (Princeton, 2009) - the most generous billionaires are all Americans, because American culture is more accustomed to the risk and trust of others. We in Europe and especially in Italy, but it is widely thought that everything that you do not know is a threat and that the main objective of the next is to cheat. "

Legrenzi is about to publish a book of economic psychology in which a chapter is devoted to the relationship between trust and money. "This research is particularly interesting - he explains - because the data were collected in a trust game, a game designed to detect the level of confidence of the participants. The researcher did a survey or investigation but wanted to verify the relationship between trust and generosity, showing that the most generous are also the most humble subjects. Those with a life of the broader relationship, less accustomed to see the neighbor as an enemy or a potential pest. "

The professor also explains that there are four types of relationship between money and trust: trust well placed, misplaced trust, distrust, and the well placed confidence misplaced. Membership in a category rather than another determines our mental attitude towards others and money. "And generally - the author explains not have to be stupid to do stupid things (Princeton, 2010) - who does not trust a lot of others to the trust game is stingy. Who does not trust never makes a nonsense because, although not to make mistakes, you first of many possibilities. The difference between stupidity and error is that the first excludes all variables, both negative and positive, while the error is essential for growth, even economically. Who is rich makes a lot of nonsense, the poor a lot of mistakes. "

It will, therefore, why, often, we offer Italian dinner to entire tables of friends but we are not able to donate 10 euros to a non-profit. And what about the acquaintance of ours full of money that never gives alms, and that other, precarious, which each year gives 50 euros to the pound mutts? It 'a matter of trust, scientists say. And then, in the broadest sense, including sensitivity. [Photo of shawnlzea licensed under Creative Commons ]