Psychologiczne skutki aktywacji idei pieniędzy a obdarowywanie bliskich
The psychological consequences of mere exposure to money and gift-giving

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper was to verify if money reminders will influence the tendency to spend one’s resources on kin and friends. Previous research concerned with the mere exposure to money concentrated only on behaviors directed at anonymous partners. However, in such a situation the reciprocity rule is of less importance than when behavior is directed at known partners, especially close friends and relatives. This paper presents three experiments showing that subtle reminders of money decrease the declared value of birthday gift to the best friend (Study 1 and 3) and the value of Christmas gifts (Study 2). Moreover, counting coins instead of candies increased the expectation about the value of a birthday present received from the very best friend (Study 3). To conclude, the symbolic power of money is very strong, as it decreases the propensity to share own resource with friends and relatives, even if it means behaving against social rules that apply to such situations. Money bolsters concentration on own goals, motivates to keep resources necessary to reach those goals, and changes the perception of social world from community mode to market-pricing mode.

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