talk about a semantic reaction! (?) (file under: biosurvival tix)
RMJon23
AP
Seeing Money Can Change Behavior
Thursday November 16, 8:59 pm ET
By Randolph E. Schmid, AP Science Writer
Study Demonstrates That Showing People Money Can Change Their Behavior
WASHINGTON (AP) -- "Show me the money," demanded Cuba Gooding Jr., in
the movie "Jerry McGuire." He meant pay me the money, of course, but it
turns out that merely showing it to people can change their behavior.
Kathleen Vohs, assistant professor of marketing at the University of
Minnesota, and colleagues, conducted a series of nine experiments in
which people were asked to do puzzles or other tasks and the behavior
of people exposed to money was compared to others who were not prompted
to think about it.
The two groups acted differently, the researchers report in Friday's
issue of the journal Science.
"The mere presence of money changes people," Vohs said. "The effect can
be negative, it can be positive. Exposure to money, or the concept of
money, elevates a sense of self-sufficiency," and can make people less
social.
For example, she said, a student with little money who wants to move to
a new apartment gets a bunch of friends together and they have a few
laughs along the way.
But once they get a good job they hire a mover. That may be more
efficient, but they lose out on some personal moments, she explained in
a telephone interview.
"The underlying idea is that at some point early on in human evolution
everyone probably needed someone else to help them achieve their
goals," whether building a home or catching food. Eventually systems of
exchange came along, and then money, which could be exchanged for
things, allowing people to pursue their own aims without the aid of
others. So, over time, people with money didn't need other people so
much.
In one of the experiments, 52 University of Minnesota students were
divided into groups and asked to make sentences out of a scrambled
group of words. For one group the sentence turned out to be "a
high-paying salary" while others got "it is cold outside."
Then they were asked to arrange a set of discs into a square and told
they could ask for help if they needed it. Some of those who had made
sentences not mentioning money were placed so they could see a stack of
Monopoly money.
The students who had unscrambled the sentence about money worked on the
puzzle an average of 5.2 minutes before asking for help. Those who had
made the neutral sentence but could see the play money worked on it an
average of 5.1 minutes.
But students who had no money-related prompt turned to others for help
sooner, they worked just over 3 minutes before asking for help.
In another experiment 44 students at Florida State University were each
given $2 in quarters -- which they were told was leftover from a
previous experiment -- and asked to unscramble sentences that divided
them into two groups, one that was reminded of money by the sentence
and others that were not.
When they left, the researcher noted that there was a box by the door
for donations for needy students if they wanted to chip in, but they
didn't have to.
On average, students who had read neutral sentences donated $1.34 while
those whose sentences reminded them of money kept more for themselves,
giving an average of just 77 cents.
In another test, 61 students at the University of British Columbia sat
at desks to fill out questionnaires. Some desks faced a poster showing
money, some saw a poster of flowers and others saw a seascape.
They were then asked to choose between group or individual recreational
activities, such as a dinner for four or individual cooking lessons.
Those who had seen the money poster were more likely to pick individual
activities than those looking at the other posters.
The experiments indicate that even quite trivial exposure to money
changes peoples' goals and behavior, Carole B. Burgoyne and Stephen E.
G. Lee of the University of Exeter in England said in a commentary on
the paper.
"Subjects exposed to the idea of money subsequently show more
self-reliant but also a more self-centered approach to problem-solving
than subjects exposed to neutral concepts," said Lee and Burgoyne, who
were not part of Vohs research team.
Vohs research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada and the Canada Research Chair Council.
Science: http://www.sciencemag.org
Dan Clore
> http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/061116/show_me_the_money.html?.v=4
>
> AP
> Seeing Money Can Change Behavior
> Thursday November 16, 8:59 pm ET
> By Randolph E. Schmid, AP Science Writer
> Study Demonstrates That Showing People Money Can Change Their Behavior
STATS has some commentary on the accuracy of media coverage
of this issue:
http://www.stats.org/index.htm
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/1587154838/ref=nosim/thedanclorenecro
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/clorebeast/
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"