The Significant Role of Money in Everyday Life

Money is a major driving force in our lives, and people will often act in immoral and exploitative ways to acquire it. This money-immorality association is well established in psychological research, with results consistently showing that subjects who are primed to think about money are later more likely to lie, cheat and steal than the subjects who were thinking about other factors. However, the study performed by Francesca Gino and Cassie Mogilner suggests that it is not necessarily money – or the love of it – that is the root of unethical behaviour; but instead it is the way the thought of money suppresses reflection. The researchers suggested that the tendency to cheat could be reversed by prompting people toward self-reflection. Aligning with previous research findings, Francesca Gino and Cassie Mogilner has convincingly shown a a link between money and morality, as well as suggested that thinking about time may be a useful way to prime us to follow our moral compass. This can have important applications within a contemporary society which tends to prime us to pay more attention to money, as we can find methods to encourage reflection on the self at the time of temptations, rather than the potential rewards they can accrue by cheating, as an effective way to curb dishonesty.

Considering the significant role of money in everyday life, the idea that money’s mere salience increases selfishness and encourages less ethical behaviour (Vohs, Mead, & Goode, 2006) has important implications. People who value morality may also behave unethically if they are able to convince themselves that their behaviour is not immoral. In previous research, Francesca Gino and the behavioural economist Dan Ariely predicted that creativity enabled di...

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...roportion who cheat or the amount of cheating contrary to the reported results of the author.

Vohs, Mead, and Goode (2008) stated that money cues trigger a business decision frame like seeing the world only through a cost/benefit analysis, in that a person considers what he or she will receive in return before enacting a given behaviour, suspending a sense of what is right and what is wrong.

In conclusion, Gino and Molginer showed that heightening the accessibility of the idea of money (via a prime) can subconsciously prompt unethical intentions and behaviour. A review of correlational research in this field indicates that there is no conclusive evidence to explain the researcher’s findings that time has an effect on morality, although it is in line with similar research. Nonetheless, there is a substantial evidence suggesting that time increases self-reflection.