Money corrupts, they say, and now there’s a study that shows why people get so sneaky when it comes to making a profit. The research, which was published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, revealed that people doubled the number of lies they told in order to earn extra cash if they were first prompted to think about money.
The study involved more than 300 business students who participated in several experiments, all of which showed that cuing people to consider money increased either unethical intentions or actions. "Our research suggests that we may be vulnerable to some influences that we’re not aware of," says study co-author Kristen Smith-Crowe, "Our moral behavior may be affected by things in the environment that we have no idea are affecting us." "The main point is a ’wow’ finding-that small and unnoticeable reminders of money can produce lying, cheating, and essentially stealing 10 minutes later. That is really fascinating," says Kathleen Vohs, professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota, who has conducted similar research but was not associated with this study.
Why would thoughts of money increase misbehavior "Money cues trigger this business decision frame like seeing the world only through a cost/benefit analysis and the significance is that we’re not considering other things like moral issues," says Smith-Crowe.
The research adds to prior work connecting wealth, greed and unethical behavior; one series of studies found that those who were rich were more likely to engage in sketchy actions, ranging from shoplifting, cutting people off in their cars to lying to job seekers to giving less to charity proportionally than those who were less well off.
In one study, this connection was explained almost entirely by the more common belief among the wealthy that greed—or love of money-was good, and an admirable quality, rather than by class itself. When the research was published, author Paul Piff of the University of California in Berkeley remarked, "We’re not arguing that rich people are bad at all, but that psychological features of wealth have these natural effects."
That may explain why money is so often seen as corrupting and having a negative influence on people’s behavior. That doesn’t bode well for a population living in an increasingly uncertain and highly unequal economy, where more relationships have become transactional and the "just business" strategy, rather than a morally driven one, seems to make more sense. "A lot of the socialization involves ideas like maximizing profits and shareholder wealth," says Smith-Crowe, "We want to ask the question, and we’re just starting on research in this: Can people’s concepts of business be changed so we can extend them to include moral considerations" Kathleen Vohs’ opinion of the research finding can be described as ______.