The study by the University of California-Berkeley and led by Paul Piff, post-doctoral scholar in psychology also found that the upper class were less likely than the lower class and minorities to anticipate financial instability.
"In times of uncertainty, we see a dramatic polarisation, with the rich more focused on holding onto and attaining wealth and the poor spending more time with friends and loved ones," Piff said.
Results from five separate experiments shed new light on how humans from varying socio-economic backgrounds may respond to both natural and man-made disasters.
These include economic recession, political instability, earthquakes and hurricanes.
Asked if they would move across the country for a higher-paying job, participants from the lower class responded they would decline in favour of staying close to friends, family and colleagues.
Conversely, upper class participants opted to take the job and cut ties with their community, according to a university statement.
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The study concludes that "material wealth may be a particularly salient, accessible and preferred individual coping mechanism... When they are threatened by perceptions of chaos within the social environment".
Researchers induced various psychological states in their subjects, such as uncertainty, helplessness or anxiety, so they could accurately assess how social class shapes the likelihood of people turning to others or to wealth in the face of perceived chaos.
This uncertainty typically triggers either a fight-or-flight or a "tend-and-befriend" response, which researchers used to assess participants reactions to induced stress.
"Given the very different forms of coping that we observe among the upper and lower classes, our research suggests that in times of economic uncertainty and social instability, disparities between the haves and the have-nots could grow ever wider," Piff said.
The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.