Psychological experiments, despite their imperfections, still offer valuable insights into human behaviour. Well-known Imperfections are their lack of reproducibility and the nature of participants – typically originate from a narrow distribution of the society, e.g. students. The paper from Kathleen Vohs, Nicole Mead and Miranda Goode is an example we want to discuss today. They investigated how the notion of money (actual cash or a mere thought) can change one’s attitude while doing a job.
Self-sufficiency hypothesis
Before we get into the details, let’s understand what is meant by self-sufficiency. It is a concept where an individual recedes from the collective to herself and spends her effort towards achieving personal goals. The objective of the experiment was to verify the hypothesis that the concept of money can make a person self-sufficient.
Two tasks
The experiment consists of two tasks: 1) descramble 30 jumbled words, and 2) complete a challenging problem of arranging 12 disks into a square.
Three groups
The participants are arranged into three groups. Control group – gets neutral words to descramble and do the second task; the play-money group – gets neutral words in task 1 but primed with a pile of monopoly money while doing task 2; the money-prime group – gets money-related words to descramble and then do the second task. Before leaving the room, the investigator mentioned his availability to help if required. Therefore, the measurement parameter of the experiment was persistence (time before a participant seeks help).
The results
The results fulfilled the hypothesis – the money groups (money-prime and play-money) both parties took the job seriously and spent more time before approaching the investigator for help. The mean times were money prime = 314.06 s (sd = 172.79); play money = 305.22 s (sd = 162.47) and control = 186.12 s (sd =118.09).
Kathleen D. Vohs, Nicole L. Mead, Miranda R. Goode, The Psychological Consequences of Money, Science, 2006, 314.
