16 June, 2021

It’s a dog eat dog world!

2 minute read

We live in a world driven by capitalism, where everything must have a price. At the same time, we hear of endearing stories where people go out of their way to make society better via acts of charity and devotion. Today we will talk about the concept of market norms which cannot be introduced without first understanding social norms.

Let’s suppose I help a friend move in to their house – I would happily do this for free in accordance with social norms, however, if moving and packing was my profession, the remuneration for the service would be driven by market norms, i.e., a fair compensation for the work performed. Rarely will we find a moving and packing service company offering their services pro bono. This mindset is deeply ingrained in the capitalistic structure.

To study this, researchers decided to run a fun experiment to see how only a soft reminder of market/capitalistic norms affected the behavior of a set of individuals. They divided people into two groups and asked them to unscramble words/sentences. The first group was asked to unscramble neutral words and sentences (‘a singing bird’, ‘a flying plane’ etc.) but the second group was asked to unscramble words and phrases related to money and capitalism (‘a fair salary’, ‘annual compensation’, etc.). This process is called priming.

After both groups were primed, they were asked to solve a difficult puzzle. They were also informed that in case they needed help, they could enter the next room and ask for it. The researchers observed that the group that was primed on neutral words spent roughly three minutes on an average before asking for help, while the group primed on the market norms spent five and a half minutes before asking for help.

Thinking about market norms and money made people more self-reliant and less willing to ask for help.

The experimenters also noticed that the participants primed on money/market norms were less willing to help the experimenters, fellow participants or even random strangers with menial tasks. As the researchers put it, “Just thinking about money makes us behave as most economists believe we behave – and  less like the social animals we are in our daily lives.

Original research by Kathleen Vohs, Nicole Mead and Miranda Goode

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6686399_The_Psychological_Consequences_of_Money