Washington, June 30 (ANI): A new study has been conducted to better understand the psychological effect of money and how it affects our behaviour, feelings and emotions.
Jia Liu, at the University of Groningen, co-wrote the article along with Kathleen Vohs at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota and Dirk Smeesters at the Rotterdam School of Management to explore the relationship between money and mimicry.
"The idea of money can activate two motives: autonomous goal striving (being independent and autonomous) and interpersonal insensitivity (indifferent to others)," Liu said.
"We were interested in which of them dominates when the idea of money is activated," Liu explained.
Behavioural mimicry involves taking on the postures, mannerisms, gestures, and motor movements of other people without conscious awareness.
According to Liu and her colleagues, previous research in the area of mimicry discovered that if a person is mimicked by someone, they end up liking the other person more than when they are not mimicked.
However, Liu and her colleagues were not entirely convinced about the positive effects of mimicry and theorized that mimicry might actually result in negative effects when a person is threatened, especially if they were reminded about something such as money.
To test their theory, 72 students were asked to complete several unrelated tasks. First, they did a filler task on the computer in which the screen's background depicted either pictures of money or shells. Then, in another task, each participant interacted with a colleague and discussed a product.
During the conversation, the colleague either unobtrusively mimicked participants' nonverbal behaviours (i.e., matching their postures and gestures after approximately 2 seconds) or did not mimic at all.
Finally, participants' feelings of threat were measured and they were asked how much they liked the colleague they had interacted with.
"This study demonstrates money's ability to stimulate a longing for freedom, as money-reminded people perceive the affiliation intention expressed by mimicry to be a threat to their personal freedom, leading them to respond antagonistically in defense," Liu and her colleagues said.
"This could have important implications for social bonding and forming interpersonal relationships, as affiliation attempts by others can backfire," they stated.
Simply put - people tend to feel threatened and end up disliking those who are trying to bond with them when reminded about money.
The findings will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. (ANI)
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