"I was once a very poor NIH postdoc. Then I got a job in a B school and quintupled my salary. And I changed. I realized I was willing to use money to get things done. When you’re poor, you ask your friends to help you move, and it sucks, but you buy pizza and beer and get through it. Now I pay someone to move me. I pay a personal shopper to help me pick out clothes, instead of shopping with my sister. I’ve become more efficient, but I bond less with others. That change interested me."  That's Kathleen Vohs, professor at University of Minnesota, who has done some insightful research on psychological effects of money.

The mere presence of money, it turns out, changes people’s motivations -- increasing their sense of self sufficiency and making them keep a greater physical distance from others.  Money makes people work longer before asking for help, be less helpful to others, and prefer to play and work alone.   Money makes people less social, but Vohs adds, "It's not malicious.  People are focused on their own goals -- but unfortunately not others -- and are motivated to work really hard to achieve them."

Here's her talk at Stanford B-School:

However, Harvard Business Review gloriously framed her subsequent research as: "Cash gives people an inner strength and can reduce their physical and emotional pain."  And indeed, Professor Vohs is also advocating cash (not digital money, but cash!) as an incentive to motivate people out of smoking and such self-defeating behaviors.

So let me get this straight -- if money is anti-social and we know that behavior patterns travel in socially-networked clusters, does it make any sense to use money as an instrument for any social change?

Posted by Nipun Mehta | comments (0) | permalink | more 'New Ideas' |