People from the wealthy upper classes are more likely than poorer folks to break laws while driving, take candy from children and lie for financial gain, said a US study on Monday.

The seven-part study by psychologists at the University of California Berkeley and the University of Toronto analyzed people’s behavior through a series of experiments.

For instance, drivers of expensive vehicles such as Mercedes, BMW and Toyota’s Prius hybrid were seen breaking the rules more often at four-way intersections than people who drove a Camry or Corolla.

They were also more likely to cut off pedestrians trying to cross the street than drivers of cheaper cars.

In another test using a game of dice, given the opportunity to win a $50 prize, people who self-reported high socio-economic status were more likely to lie and say that they had rolled higher numbers than they actually had.

“Even in people for whom $50 is a relatively small amount of money, cheating was three times as high,” said lead author Paul Piff of UC Berkeley.

“It really shows the extreme lengths to which wealth and upper rank status in society can shape patterns of self-interest and unethicality,” he told AFP.

[Which of course explains how they got their money in the first place.]