A New Study Says Thinking About Money Corrupts People
The great Wu-Tang once said that cash ruled everything around them. Does that mean they all were corrupt people? Well, it might. According to a new study from researchers at Harvard and University of Pennsylvania, when people think about money, they tend to act morally bankrupt. When people think about time, they act more conscientious.
Francesca Gino (Harvard) and Cassie Mogilner (Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania), are the psychological scientists who discovered this phenomenon. The duo, noticing how most "immoral" decisions hardly register with people, wondered if asking people to be more introspective would increase their likelihood to act ethically correct. "Less attention is given to the more prevalent ‘ordinary’ unethical behavior carried out by people who value and care about morality but behave unethically when faced with an opportunity to cheat," explained Gino, in a press release.
The team asked participants to complete a variety of activities, including solving word finds, locating song lyrics, and counting items. Each one was designed to get the people thinking about money, time, or something neutral. After the tasks were completed, the group then worked on puzzles that Gino and Mogliner said weren't connected to the experiment. The incentive to finish these was money. Each of these unconnected puzzles that participants solved, they were given more cash, in addition to what they were earning for taking part in the study. When they were finished with the last round of money-boosting puzzles, they were asked to jot down how many they had completed.
When Gino and Mogliner counted up the latter round of puzzles (they were tracked via numbers that the participants weren't aware of), the duo found that a whopping 88 percent of the participants who were provoked to think about money cheated on the puzzles. By contrast, only 67 percent of participants provoked to think about something neutral cheated. Those that were provoked to think about time? Only 42 percent ended up cheating. Gino and Mogliner explained in the media release for their study that self-reflection was the key here. It forced people "to notice that how they spend their time sums up to their life as a whole, encouraging them to act in ways they can be proud of when holding up this mirror to who they are." Mogliner added, "Our results suggest that finding ways to nudge people to reflect on the self at the time of temptation, rather than on the potential rewards they can accrue by cheating, may be an effective way to curb dishonesty."
The study is interesting, but easier said than done. Any alcoholic can tell you that being able to reflect on what the consequences of drinking will be would stop them from drinking. The problem is initiating that self-reflection. The participants unknowingly were nudged toward one way of thinking or another. When left to their own devices, however, would the results be the same? We'd answer, but you might not believe us. Pay day is right around the corner.
[Image via Flickr - Epsos]
