London, Nov 24 (IANS) Rich people have trouble reading emotions because they can solve most of their problems without taking others' help, says a new study.

University of California, San Francisco, researchers say that poorer people are better at gauging how someone feels because they need to rely on others more often, reports the journal Psychological Science.

For example, people who cannot afford to buy support services, such as childcare, have to rely on neighbours or kin to mind their children while they are away, reports the Daily Mail.

In US, the term 'upper class' often refers to how rich someone is, rather than the more complex notions of class that exist in Britain.

In the study, volunteers did an emotion perception test in which they were told to look at pictures of faces and identify its emotion.

People with more education performed worse on the task than people with less education.

In another study, university students who were of higher social standing had a more difficult time reading the emotions of a stranger during a group interview.

A final experiment found that when people were made to feel that they were at a lower social class than they actually were, they got better at reading emotions.