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Money-Minded Workers Slack on Interaction
Money may give people the incentive to work harder
but their personal relationships may suffer.
By Stephanie Watson
WebMD Health News
Money may make the world go round, as the song goes,
by encouraging the type of hard work and
resourcefulness that leads to economic success. But
money might also put a strain on personal
relationships, a new study shows.
Most
everyone agrees that having money is a good thing.
What is less clear is how it affects people
psychologically. A group of researchers from the
University of Minnesota, Florida State University,
and University of British Columbia wanted to find
out how money might affect people's performance and
behavior toward one another.
They
conducted a series of experiments in the lab in
which participants were reminded of money in several
different ways. During one reminder, participants
played a game of Monopoly and received either $4,000
of play money, $200 of play money, or no play money.
Other reminders asked people to think about having
either abundant or very limited financial resources,
organize phrases that were related or unrelated to
money ("I cashed a check," or "I wrote the letter"),
or sit near images of money or neutral objects.
The
researchers found that being exposed to money led to
big changes in people's actions. Those who had money
on their minds were less inclined to help someone in
need and more inclined to work alone than interact
with others. And they tended to work longer on
challenging tasks without asking for help.
The
bottom line: money appears to have both positive and
negative effects on our behavior. On the one hand,
it encourages self-sufficiency and hard work; but on
the other, it discourages some positive social
interaction.
Although it may seem from this study that money
makes people greedy or selfish, the authors say this
isn't necessarily the case. "A selfish person likely
would have immediately asked for help when given a
tough assignment ... and would have rejected the
notion of accepting more work than was necessary,"
they write in the June issue of Current Directions
in Psychological Science.
Given the important role money appears to play in
human behavior and performance, the authors say it
would be helpful for researchers to conduct more
studies evaluating its impact on human psychology.
©
WebMD. All rights reserved.
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The researchers
found that being exposed to money led to big
changes in people's actions. |
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