How Money Hardens the Heart

A recent set of experiments suggests that a flash of money hardens our hearts and propels us to work harder, report psychologist Kathleen D. Vohs of the University of Minnesota and her colleagues at Florida State University and the University of British Columbia.

To set up one of the experiments, the researchers used four different types of reminders about money. One reminder involved participants playing a game of Monopoly and then being given either $4,000 or $200 worth of play money before moving on to another task. In another scenario, participants were asked to think about life with many or few financial resources. In a third case, participants were reminded of money via organizing phrases that either were or were not related to money, and in the final scenario, participants were exposed to computer screen savers of either cash or neutral items.

The results, recently published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, show remarkably clear conclusions. In every condition, all participants who were reminded of money demonstrated behaviors consistent with decreased interpersonal skills and increased personal performance.

Specifically, the participants who were exposed to money spent less time helping a person who needed it, sat farther away from another person, and preferred solitary activities. In addition, the money-motivated people showed preferences for working alone and asked for help less frequently. On the other hand, these participants also revealed an increased desire to take on more work and showed greater persistence in difficult tasks.