IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joepsy/v33y2012i3p603-608.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Would you do something for me? The effects of money activation on social preferences and social behavior in young children

Author

Listed:
  • Gasiorowska, Agata
  • Zaleskiewicz, Tomasz
  • Wygrab, Sandra

Abstract

The research presented in this paper shows that merely activating the idea of money affects the social behavior and social preferences of young children who do not understand the economic functions of money. From an economic point of view, money is universal, instrumental, and can be defined by the functions that it provides. From the psychological point of view, money is more symbolic and emotional than instrumental, and can serve as social resource in interpersonal and intrapersonal regulation. These effects of money are connected with its symbolic, rather than its instrumental, nature. To test whether the symbolic and instrumental meanings of money are developing at appropriate ages, we conducted two experiments on 5–8year olds. After money activation, children were more selfish in economic games, revealing less prosocial preferences and were less prone to help the experimenter than children from the control group. Even if children at this stage do not understand the economic mechanisms of money and are not able to use money properly in the instrumental context, they react to symbolic activation. This might imply that the symbolic meaning of money is more primal than the instrumental meaning.

Suggested Citation

  • Gasiorowska, Agata & Zaleskiewicz, Tomasz & Wygrab, Sandra, 2012. "Would you do something for me? The effects of money activation on social preferences and social behavior in young children," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 603-608.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:33:y:2012:i:3:p:603-608
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2011.11.007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487011001747
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joep.2011.11.007?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gino, Francesca & Pierce, Lamar, 2009. "The abundance effect: Unethical behavior in the presence of wealth," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 109(2), pages 142-155, July.
    2. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher, "undated". "Why Social Preferences Matter - The Impact of Non-Selfish Motives on Competition," IEW - Working Papers 084, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    3. Leiser, David, 1983. "Children's conceptions of economics -- The constitution of a cognitive domain," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 297-317, December.
    4. Jia (Elke) Liu & Dirk Smeesters & Kathleen D. Vohs, 2012. "Reminders of Money Elicit Feelings of Threat and Reactance in Response to Social Influence," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 38(6), pages 1030-1046.
    5. Leiser, David & Sevon, Guje & Levy, Daphna, 1990. "Children's economic socialization: Summarizing the cross-cultural comparison of ten countries," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 591-614, December.
    6. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher, 2002. "Why Social Preferences Matter -- The Impact of Non-Selfish Motives on Competition, Cooperation and Incentives," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(478), pages 1-33, March.
    7. Belk, Russell W. & Wallendorf, Melanie, 1990. "The sacred meanings of money," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 35-67, March.
    8. Ernst Fehr & Helen Bernhard & Bettina Rockenbach, 2008. "Egalitarianism in young children," Nature, Nature, vol. 454(7208), pages 1079-1083, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kidd, Michael & Nicholas, Aaron & Rai, Birendra, 2013. "Tournament outcomes and prosocial behaviour," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 387-401.
    2. Chan, Ho Fai & Moy, Naomi & Schaffner, Markus & Torgler, Benno, 2021. "The effects of money saliency and sustainability orientation on reward based crowdfunding success," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 443-455.
    3. Gasiorowska, Agata, 2012. "Psychologiczne skutki aktywacji idei pieniędzy a obdarowywanie bliskich [The psychological consequences of mere exposure to money and gift-giving]," MPRA Paper 48170, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Valeria Maggian & Marie Claire Villeval, 2016. "Social preferences and lying aversion in children," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(3), pages 663-685, September.
    2. Michal Bauer & Julie Chytilová & Barbara Pertold-Gebicka, 2014. "Parental background and other-regarding preferences in children," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 17(1), pages 24-46, March.
    3. Alexander Ehlert & Robert Böhm & Jürgen Fleiß & Heiko Rauhut & Robert Rybnicek & Fabian Winter, 2021. "The Development of Prosociality: Evidence for a Negative Association between Age and Prosocial Value Orientation from a Representative Sample in Austria," Games, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-17, September.
    4. Bügelmayer, Elisabeth & Katharina Spiess, C., 2014. "Spite and cognitive skills in preschoolers," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 154-167.
    5. Nelson, Katherine M. & Schlüter, Achim & Vance, Colin, 2017. "Distributional preferences and donation behavior among marine resource users in Wakatobi, Indonesia," Ruhr Economic Papers 690, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    6. Johan Willner, 2003. "Privatisation and Public Ownership in Finland," CESifo Working Paper Series 1012, CESifo.
    7. Carlo Borzaga & Ermanno Tortia, 2004. "Worker involvement in entrepreneurial nonprofit organizations. Toward a new assessment of workers' perceived satisfaction and fairness," Department of Economics Working Papers 0409, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    8. Adrian Bruhin & Ernst Fehr & Daniel Schunk, 2019. "The many Faces of Human Sociality: Uncovering the Distribution and Stability of Social Preferences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(4), pages 1025-1069.
    9. Kimmich, Christian & Fischbacher, Urs, 2016. "Behavioral determinants of supply chain integration and coexistence," Journal of Forest Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 55-77.
    10. Alpizar, Francisco & Carlsson, Fredrik & Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 2005. "How much do we care about absolute versus relative income and consumption?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 405-421, March.
    11. Engelbert Stockhammer & Paul Ramskogler, 2009. "Post-Keynesian economics How to move forward," European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies: Intervention, Edward Elgar Publishing, vol. 6(2), pages 227-246.
    12. Scharpf, Fritz W., 2007. "Reflections on multilevel legitimacy," MPIfG Working Paper 07/3, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    13. Frank Cowell & Marc Fleurbaey & Bertil Tungodden, 2015. "The tyranny puzzle in social preferences: an empirical investigation," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 45(4), pages 765-792, December.
    14. Thieme, Lutz & Winkelhake, Olaf & Hartmann, Ulrich, 2014. "Fairness als universelle Norm? Empirische Evidenz ohne Manna [Fairness as a universal norm? Empiric evidence without manna]," Working Papers of the European Institute for Socioeconomics 12, European Institute for Socioeconomics (EIS), Saarbrücken.
    15. Fredrik Carlsson & Olof Johansson‐Stenman & Peter Martinsson, 2007. "Do You Enjoy Having More than Others? Survey Evidence of Positional Goods," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 74(296), pages 586-598, November.
    16. Johnsen, Åshild A & Kvaløy, Ola, 2014. "You always meet twice: An experiment on intrinsic versus instrumental reciprocity," UiS Working Papers in Economics and Finance 2014/2, University of Stavanger.
    17. Ortiz-Riomalo, Juan Felipe & Koessler, Ann-Kathrin & Engel, Stefanie, 2021. "Inducing perspective-taking for prosocial behaviour in natural resource management," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    18. Benedikt Herrmann & Henrik Orzen, 2008. "The appearance of homo rivalis: Social preferences and the nature of rent seeking," Discussion Papers 2008-10, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    19. Paul H. Jensen & Robin E. Stonecash, 2004. "The Efficiency of Public Sector Outsourcing Contracts: A Literature Review," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2004n29, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    20. Guala, Francesco & Mittone, Luigi & Ploner, Matteo, 2013. "Group membership, team preferences, and expectations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 183-190.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Money; Children; Interpersonal relations; Social preferences;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:33:y:2012:i:3:p:603-608. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joep .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.