Policy Punchline

Rob Henderson is a Gates-Cambridge Scholar pursuing a PhD in social psychology at Cambridge University, UK. His experience led him to develop insights on the upper class, luxury beliefs, human nature, and other topics in social psychology that we discuss in this interview. Rob’s upbringing was turbulent to say the least and shaped him to be a conservative. He bounced around foster homes and experienced the loss of his loved ones at a young age. Having graduated at the bottom of his class in high school, he decided to enlist in the US Air Force. Then, as a veteran, he subsequently enrolled in Yale University as an Eli Whitney undergraduate student. Given his working-class and military background, studying at Yale shocked him as the elite higher education culture was not anything like the army or his childhood. Luxury beliefs are those that act as status symbols for the elite. In the past, the elites showed their wealth and status by having luxury goods. However, since it’s much easier to obtain luxury item