How Thoughts of Money Lead Us Astray: Experiments show that cash on the brain suppresses reflection
December 28, 2013 Leave a comment
How Thoughts of Money Lead Us Astray
Experiments show that cash on the brain suppresses reflection
Dec. 27, 2013 7:48 p.m. ET
The New Year makes many of us think about time passing, and research shows that such thoughts often spur us to act more ethically. If we were to brood instead about the cash we’re likely to blow on Dec. 31, our actions might be less upright.Two business professors from Harvard University and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania conducted experiments in which some people were primed to think about money and others about time. Then the participants were given the opportunity to cheat anonymously.
The results? Thinking about time led to much more honest behavior. That is in line with previous research showing that a focus on money raises self-interest, while a focus on time boosts generosity. But the new research also suggests that it isn’t necessarily money—or the love of it—that is the root of unethical behavior; the culprit, instead, seems to be the way thoughts of money suppress reflection.
In one experiment, 98 volunteers were asked to make a sentence out of some scrambled words. Some had been given words related to money, others time, still others a neutral word-set. Then all of them reported, on the honor system, about how they performed some numerical tasks; succeeding meant a payment of as much as $20. The percentages of subjects who cheated were 42% of those primed about time, 67% of the neutral group—and 87% of those primed about money.
In a second experiment, half the subjects were told that they were taking an intelligence test and the rest a personality test. In the former group, 50% of the money-primed subjects cheated versus 30% of the time-primed group. All participants who were told they were taking a personality test cheated at the same rate, about 28%. Taking such a test seems to make people more reflective, the researchers said.
A third experiment again primed volunteers about either time or money, and then gave them a chance to cheat. More or less as expected, 67% of the money-primed subjects did so versus 36% of the time-primed. But when the groups had to cheat in front of a mirror—a context for self-reflection—the money-primed group was only slightly more likely to cheat.
“Time, Money, and Morality” by Francesca Gino and Cassie Mogilner, Psychological Science (Dec. 6)
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