Does money undermine community?
In a series of experiments, Vohs and her colleagues found ways to get people to think about money without explicitly telling them to do so. They gave some people tasks that involved unscrambling phrases about money. With others, they left piles of Monopoly money nearby. Another group saw a screensaver with various denominations of money. Other people, randomly selected, unscrambled phrases that were not about money, did not see Monopoly money, and saw different screensavers. In each case, those who had been led to think about money – let’s call them “the money group” – behaved differently from those who had not. * When given a difficult task and told that help was available, people in the money group took longer to ask for help. * When asked for help, people in the money group spent less time helping. * When told to move their chair so that they could talk with someone else, people in the money group left a greater distance between chairs. * When asked to choose...