Psychologiczne skutki aktywacji idei pieniędzy a obdarowywanie bliskich

The aim of this paper was to verify if reminders of money influence the tendency to spend one’s resources on kin and friends. Previous research on the mere exposure to money concentrated only on behaviors directed at anonymous partners. However, in such 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 or best friend (study 1 and 3) as well as value Christmas gifts (Study 2). Moreover, counting coins instead of candies increased the expectation demands for the value of birthday present got 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 regulating such situation. Money bolsters concentration on own goals, motivates to keep resources that are inevitable to reach those goals, and changes the perception of social world from community mode to market-pricing mode.