How Does Money Change Your Behavior or Beliefs?
Most of us are interested in making money. Sure there's the saying "who doesn't like money?" Of course it's necessary to have and represents a free market system but is it changing your behavior or beliefs to obtain it?
Money can influence the way you think or act toward others. We constantly edify those that are considered rich and change our behavior towards others to gain respect and have a better view of ourselves. It has been pointed out that money is an incentive and motivates a person to attain personal goals and become more productive in society.
Social vs Business Market Norms
In 2004, a study was done to see the psychological effects between social and business market norms. In the experiment, a computer was setup to show a circle on the left of the screen and a box on the right. The task was to drag the circle onto the box and the circle would disappear and a new one would appear back on the left of the screen. They would repeat this process for 5 minutes and the participants had to drag as many circles as they could. This was to measure the amount of effort participants would put into this task.
One group of participants were given 5 dollars for participating in the experiment. The money was given to them as the walked in and they were told that the task will take 5 minutes and would be alerted when it's done.
The second group were given 50 cents and were given the same instructions.
The third group was not offered anything. Money was not mentioned to the group and and was just asked as a favor to do the same task.
The results were interesting. The group that received 5 dollars dragged and average of 159 circles, and the group that received 50 cents dragged an average of 101 circles. The group that received more money seemed to be more motivated and worked harder than the group that received less.
What were the results of the third group that received no money and did it as a favor? On average, the third group dragged 168 circles which was the most out of all the groups. This group worked harder and more motivated under non-monetary social norms.
When mentioning money, the groups that were paid were applying business market norms to the situation and the social norms were no longer in consideration. Doing something for free or as a favor can be a positive social aspect. When business market norms are applied, one could simply feel that they deserve more money and may under-perform as a result.
Self-Sufficiency
Money can be an incentive and have a person become self-sufficient. Not needing aid from others but can also reduce helpfulness toward others.
In this experiment done in 2006, participants were randomly assigned conditions. Some were reminded of money and the control participants were reminded of no money.
The experimenter explained to the participants that she needed help coding data sheets and was an undergraduate. She mentioned that each data sheet takes 5 minutes to code and the participants were left alone to indicate how many data sheets they were willing to do.
The participants that were reminded of money volunteered less data sheets than the control participants. When showing the results in time, participants in the money condition only volunteered around an average of 25 minutes, whereas the control participants volunteered an average of 42.5 minutes.
People that are self-sufficient tend to offer less help because they expect that each person will take care of him or herself.
In another experiment, there were two groups of participants, one group were had money mentioned to them and even had monopoly money on the table in the room they were in. The other group had no mention of money. Both groups were given impossible tasks to do by themselves and they were instructed that help was available. The money-related group seem more focused on getting the task done alone when it was not possible to do solo. The non-money group showed tendencies of asking for help.
Ethics
When you have more money, are you ethical or unethical? Some would say not having wealth or being in a lower-class tend to behave more unethical but studies show it's the opposite.
In one study, they investigated if upper-class drivers were more likely to cut off other vehicles at a busy intersection. They used codes of vehicle status (make, age, and appearance) to categorize a driver's social class. With stop signs on all sides, observers recorded approaching vehicles and whether the driver would cut off other vehicles by crossing the intersection before waiting their turn. The results indicated that upper-class drivers were most likely to cut off other drivers at the intersection, even when controlling to the time of day, driver's sex and age, and the amount of traffic.
In follow-up laboratory studies, upper-class individuals were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies (study 3), take valued goods from others (study 4), lie in a negotiation (study 5), cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize (study 6), and endorse unethical behavior at work (study 7) than were lower-class individuals.
"Everyone Has a Price"
You heard that saying before. So how much money would it take to change your behavior or beliefs? If you hate to eat lemons and I were to give you $1, would you eat the lemon? Perhaps if I gave $100 or thousands, then would you?
The video below shows just that example on how people change their beliefs for the right amount of money.
So how much money would it take to change your behavior or beliefs?
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The ant and the grasshopper; who is selfish? The person who gives no help or the person who expects help after doing nothing for themselves.
Self sufficiency is the least selfish thing you can do, because you minimise your burden on others. Of course just my opinion.
If charity is given too easily, then it becomes an expectation, a predjudice of low expectations. Which can be the most devastating to a population (i.e. our indigenous population in Australia). More money will not fix it, but perhaps a culture of self sufficiency will, but we have forgotten how to do that.
Oh okay... This post wasn't really about selfishness or people expecting help... It was about the behavior of when money is involved.
Thanks for the comment.
I wasnt tryin to be critical. If we talk about money changing behaviour, we kind of are talkin about selfishness and expectation indirectly. Sorry if you felt I was having a go, I wasn't. I just think that it is the expectations of people and the self that ultimately dictates ones behavior, the money is the catalyst for how we change.
I liked your post. Oh, my comment was more in regards to the self sufficiency part.
You can see right here on Steemit how money influences people, and how money has influence. The more SP you have, the big reward you can give yourself and others. The more SP you have, the more people are drawn to your blogs to try to pick up a slice of of that SP.
Never has the phrase 'money comes to money' been so true!
Yes this is true. The thing is, does this really improve content or make it worse?
It should, but it's debatable if it has or not.
If you can up-vote your own post to the tune of $100, 10 times a day, why put the time in to create a masterpiece? You don't need votes from others.
If you cant attract more than 5 views to your post after writing a masterpiece, what's the point in spending the time doing this?
Sorry, we are moving away from the context of your blog a little :)
It's no problem because this follows along the line of behavior with money.
But yes, sock puppet accounts and self-voting makes it hard to see if this is improving content creation. You see people that are lazy to put effort into creating content just to get rewarded. Even having bots to just upvote whatever to get curation rewards without looking at the content.
Indeed. So the solution?
Go all in with Steem Power, get noticed by people with similar steem power, jump on the voting gravy train / circle jerk .... get out before it comes off the rails.
:(
lol
That's a great sollution to the other post! Connect to others with the same Steem Power!
A lot people have money and get joy from using their money to oppress other people and no one can stop them, but on the bright side, money is good because it gives you a sense of security. whatever it is a person may want today all revolves around money so it is quite essential to everyone who wants to do stuff they like. the only thing i'm not paying for right now is the air i'm breathing.
Yea it's necessary to have money but it was interesting to see the results of these studies.
Thanks for sharing! I actually wanted to get a bit deeper with some areas if you'd like!
"Of course it's necessary to have". Actually, there are some alternative economics, mainly 'gift economies' that are presenting an alternative to this truism.
"Money can be an incentive and have a person become self-sufficient". If money is only a medium of exchange (exchange dealing with multiple people) money inherently is not "self-sufficiency" as you still need other people to agree on the story of money and accept it as value. True "self sufficiency" if it is something worth obtaining; would involve not needing money and operating outside the money system to meet ones needs.
Not sure where you live but almost everyone needs money in today's society. Unless you are a part of a tribe in the middle of nowhere or something. Generally the self-sufficiency can be done with something of value to a person and not money.
I do get what you're saying though.
Haha, or unless you're a part of a community in the middle of somewhere? There are several communities (just that I know of) where many (not all) of the participants live entirely without money! Here's one http://www.auroville.org/contents/95.
I just wanted to add this in, because it felt like (I may be wrong) as if you were saying it was a fundamental fact of society to have money (instead of a choice that we either consciously or unconsciously make). To further add to the point, our culture places far to much value on one form of capital (financial) nearly ignoring the rest (living, material, social, cultural, intellectual, experiential, spiritual) where people from monks to commune dwellers have found systems to live without money... Just wanting to expand the conversation :)
In a general sense, the behaviors are similar to money since it is something of value to incentivise and motivate the behavior of someone. The fact there are those communities that live without money is true but they wouldn't live that way if there were no benefits(value) of living that way.
Let's say I'm not interested in making money, really.
The thing is I have to make money no matter I like it or not, as there's no other way out on this prison planet of ours.
(The question is: is it really ours or someone elses? ;) But that's another topic. ☺)
Yes in general societies we do have to make money.
Oh don't get that started :P
I don't want to seem greedy, I'll eat a lemon for $100!
Very interesting reading. It is true that money changes our perspective, but at the same time I think it also changes the way others see us. Let's say two friends doing the same job for some years, then one of them inherits some moeny or wins the lottery. He might give up his job, start doing cool stuff- at some point the other guy will start resenting it even if his friend is doing his best not to flaunt his money.
Do you even hate lemons? lol
Very good point. The behavior of resentment can rise or the one that inherits a lot of money could change and feel as if they are better than others.
Not particularly...Guess I could eat one a day, if you've got the money. ☺️
I wonder if you can find someone to eat them for free, as a favor, like in the experiment you wrote about.
Good post. Extrinsic incentive vs. intrinsic motivation. The dynamics at play when money get's involved to motivate, drive or lead behavior.
Just because of money, some people think that makes them better than others, justifying and excusing their wrong behavior. But the true measure of what makes someone better is their behavior, not their money. They have it asshat backwards. Sounds like some "whales" here... lol
Doing distasteful things for money gives us money for suffering a temporary thing we don't like, so it's a trade-off. Eating lemon, eating brusselsprouts, etc. But doing something immoral that causes harm to another for money should never be accepted. That's when the lower consciousness focus on money at the expense of others takes over, and we justify, to create a "right" for something that is wrong. We can easily believe whatever we want in favor of getting something we want, like money, even when others are harmed. Resteemed and 100% vote ;)
Hehe yes! the behavior is what I was getting at. Just because something of value like money, a person will change their behavior.
You got what I was getting at :)
But often times the possession of money/wealth or the perception thereof by people affect their behavior of others. It's no longer about incentive but on how one measures perceptively another person's intrinsic value. Like how do people behave toward the visibly rich, or the vagabond, homeless, or lower class. The prince and the pauper. The whale and the minnow. Royal and non royal..
It's a sure thing for some time that the carrot and the stick strategy is not working anymore. After a certain level, having more money will mean nothing, just a boost of hormones and then back to the normal life. How much is that level, this could depend. But that would be the first thing people should do when thinking about money as they are not a scope in itself...or it should't be.
I knew the researches, we are fascinating living creatures and irrational behaviour is what we are pretty good at.
I couldn't agree more hehe. Thanks for your comment.
Interesting read and video. The video isn't particularly meaningful though. If someone offered me a few dollars to say would I change my beliefs I would say 'yeah of course, bring it on' and then I would walk around the corner and change my belief right back again. In short, for an experiment such as this I would gladly lie just to take the money. No harm done.
Beliefs require evidence to change. Someone could offer me a million dollars to actually believe (i.e. not just say) that SantaClaus really existed and I couldn't take it because that belief would require evidence to change it. Likewise Values are deeply ingrained. Most people will not change their values for any amount of money because it is part of their identity.
Money is just energy, some people will abuse that energy, others will do good with it. I think the real debate is about empathy.
You would have the behavior of lying for money? So money would change your behavior.
I get what you're saying but that was the point of the video. To show how someone would change their behavior or belief for money. I'm sure they would walk away and still go back to behaving or believing as they usually do. It's like how a lot of men's behaviors change when women are around.
Sure, I would lie in that particular situation, because there are no real harm done, apart from perhaps the wallet of the person running the experiment, but he expected to lose some money anyway so no harm done.
As for a belief, it can only be changed with evidence. What if I offer someone a million dollars to believe that the earth is flat? They might say the earth is flat just to get the million, but their belief would not change. Not without some solid evidence.
I 'believe' (excuse the pun) that money only corrupts those who already had bad values or already corrupt people attain money because they have been relentless and without empathy. Money is easier to come for those who lack empathy because they are able to attain it at any cost to others. The rest of us would think twice and consider the cost to others. The tragedy is that our society actually rewards sociopaths.
Thanks for the upvote, Followed and upvoted back :) ... Good content!
Thanks. Followed back as well.