Just thinking about money promotes selfishness

There’s a fascinating article on a site by Bob Sutton about the effects of “priming” people with ideas of money on subsequent acts of generosity. Here’s a snippet:

I ran into a fascinating set of nine studies packed into a 2006 Science magazine article called The Psychological Consequences of Money by Kathleen D. Vohs and her colleagues. They used a series of “primes” to turn research subjects’ attention to money (showing them lists of words about money, putting piles of monopoly money in front of them, showing them films that talked about money) and then created a host of little challenges, ranging from whether they would ask or gave help while struggling to solve an unsolvable to whether they helped an (apparently) blind person who accidentally dropped a bunch of pencils. Note there we no incentives manipulated in these studies, just a focus on money.

The pattern of results is pretty scary and has some interesting implications. Compared to control subjects, those primed to focus on money:

1. Were less likely to ask others for help
2. Less likely to give others help
3. Preferred to work alone
4. Preferred to play alone
5. Put more physical distance between themselves as a new acquaintance

The little study with the blind person was especially interesting. Subjects played Monopoly for 7 minutes and then the board was cleared by the experimenter, and regardless of how the game had gone, they were left with either a pile of $4000 in Monopoly money, $200, or no money. Then the (apparently) blind person came in and “accidentally” spilled a pile of pencils — those subjects with a big pile of fake money in front of them picked up significantly fewer of the blind person’s pencils than those with a small pile or no pile at all.

I can imagine that having a pile of money in front of some people could give them a sense that they are “important” and that it is therefore “beneath them” to do something as menial as helping another person.

It’s interesting how ego responses can be so easily triggered. If it is a sense of important that sets off selfish behavior, that’s a real shame. It would be good if our society cultivated more of a sense of obligation to “spread the wealth” (to use Obama’s unfortunate phrase) when we have some.

Bob Sutton: Thinking About Money Causes People to Avoid Asking for and Giving Help: Research in Science Magazine

Hat tip to Pam Fox Rollin via Twitter.

Comments are closed.