Money makes people selfish

In the Journal Science there was an article on a series of experiments that has shown that merely thinking about, or looking at money changes the way people behave, causing them to be more selfish and self sufficient.

Participants first rearranged several jumbled lists of words to form sentences. Some participants were given word lists that led to neutral sentences (e.g. ‘it is cold outside’), whereas other participants were given words that led to money-related sentences (e.g. ‘a high-paying salary’). Next, they all attempted to solve a difficult geometric puzzle. Those participants who had completed the money-related sentences worked significantly longer on the puzzle before asking for help (average of 314 seconds), compared with the participants who’d completed neutral sentences (average of 186 seconds – no different from controls who didn’t complete the earlier sentence task).

In another experiment, participants were again primed with either the neutral or money-related descrambling task. Afterwards they were asked to sit individually in a room to complete some irrelevant questionnaires. They were soon joined by an assistant of the researchers who was pretending to be another research participant, confused by the questionnaires. The participants primed by the money-related sentences spent only half as much time helping the confused person compared with the participants who’d completed the neutral sentences.

Further experiments showed participants who left with more money after a Monopoly game helped pick up fewer pencils dropped by a passer-by; participants primed with money-related sentences gave less money to charity; and participants placed in front of a money-themed computer screen-saver chose to sit further away from another participant they were due to chat with.

Kathleen Vohs at the Carlson School of Management and colleagues, who completed the research, said their findings helped explain why historically, people have tended to view money as good and evil. ‘As countries and cultures developed, money may have allowed people to acquire goods and services that enabled the pursuit of cherished goals, which in turn diminished reliance on friends and family,’ they said. ‘In this way, money enhanced individualism but diminished communal motivations.’

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 at 6:47 pm and is filed under CAREER MANAGEMENT, Values. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.