While money doesn’t exactly shape your belief system, it can influence the way you think and act. Yes, keeping track of your finances is a great first step but being mindful about your money is more than just counting where your cents go, but also where your senses are.
It’s about noticing what you do with your money and how you feel about the choices you make. With that said, let’s take a look at how money might affect your values and determine your actions.
Time Is Money - Or Is It?
According to a study by James Heyman and Dan Ariely in 2004, there are two types of markets that determine relationships between effort and payment – monetary and social. The study measured how motivated a person was when it comes to complete a task based on monetary rewards. For the study, subjects were asked to drag circles across a computer screen.
One group was asked to do this as a favor. Another group was asked to do it for $0.50, and the last group was offered $5. After timing the subjects, it was actually the group asked to perform the task as a favor that did it the fastest. Next was the $5 group, and last was the $0.50 group.
Through this study, we can note that money influences how we value or perceive time. For instance, doing a favour for free might come with a positive/feel-good feeling and hence, you might want to give it your best shot (or at least, quickest so you can get it out of the way).
However, when money is introduced or tied to a task, you might feel a sense of entitlement and this could affect the way you work.
As Good As You Think You’re Worth
As much as you’d like to think that everyone is more than their bank accounts, research has shown that how much you earn could have an effect on how you view both yourself and others.
For example, author Robert Rolih shared how his friend and fellow author Brian Tracy felt like he was truly worth a million bucks after buying life insurance that gave his family $1m in cover placed on his life. What this might point to is the correlation between money and your self perception.
With that in mind, your net worth may affect how you see yourself, how confident you are, how you think, and how you act. In relation, this also extends to how you may see others and act towards them – which brings us to the next point.
When money is introduced or tied to a task, you might feel a sense of entitlement and this could affect the way you work.
Money Is The Root of All Evil… Sometimes
Here’s the truth – money is the root of all evil, or at least according to a study by published in “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America”. In comparison to lower-class individuals, the study revealed that upper-class individuals were more likely to:
- Break the law while driving, relative to lower-class individuals.
- Exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies
- Take valued goods from others
- Lie in a negotiation
- Cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize, and
- Endorse unethical behavior at work
While this may not be true for all, but the study shared that: “greater resources, freedom, and independence from others among the upper class give rise to self-focused social-cognitive tendencies, which we predict will facilitate unethical behavior.”
So, what do you think – are you crazy rich, or just crazy and rich?
