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Money Turns You Into A Psychopath

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Nathanial.Dread

Nathanial.Dread

Esteemed member
I saw a really interesting documentary this evening (Park Avenue: Money, Power, and the American Dream), and they cited a really interesting study that showed that people, when they are given money, or even just believe that they have money (it can even be fake money!) tend to display characteristics we generally refer to as 'psychopathic.'

They ran a few experiments, the most interesting being a game of monopoly between two strangers. The game was rigged so that one player (chosen at random) stated with 2x the money as the other one, and assorted other unfair benefits. As the game progressed, the 'rich' player began to act more and more obnoxiously: behaving in an increasingly entitled and self-centered manner.

The thing I found the most shocking was that this effect was extremely local. You could take a person who was physically wealthy in real life and a person who was physically poor, in real life and if you made the poor person the rich monopoly player, the poor person would start to behave as though they were rich, and the rich person would start behaving as though they were poor.
Fake money in front of them had more of an effect on their egos and consciousness then real money that was far away.

This study effectively destroyed any hope I had for a free market libertarian paradise.

The article it was originally posted in is too long to quote here, but I provide a link:
I HIGHLY recommend that everyone interested in psychology, neuroscience or economics (or any combination thereof take give this a read)
nymag.com

How Money Makes People Act Less Human -- New York Magazine - Nymag

In a windowless room on the University of California, Berkeley, campus, two undergrads are playing a Monopoly game that one of them has no chance of winning. A team of psychologists has rigged it so that skill, brains, savvy, and luck—those ing [...]
nymag.com nymag.com

Blessings
~ND
 
Nathanial.Dread said:
This study effectively destroyed any hope I had for a free market libertarian paradise.
Click to expand...

*sigh* I feel you bruh. Humans will be human, apparently. And unfortunately, this kind of psycpathic entitlement isn't limited to rich people. It can manifest itself due to different forms of entitlement or percieved elitism. Some of the worst perpetrators of this behavior are police officers, or people who deliberately seek out "positions of authority" such as TSA screeners, security guards, bouncers, and the like. Ever hear of the Stanford prison experiment?

en.wikipedia.org

Stanford prison experiment - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

The exact same thing, just with no money involved, and probably even more scary.

I found the documentary on YouTube Park Avenue: Money, Power and The American Dream

I'm about 10 mins in and it looks like it's going to be a good one. Thanks ND.
 
What did you finally think of the documentary? I really enjoyed it, although I was also incredibly angry by the end and wish something terrible would happen to the Koch Brothers.
 
I thought it was great. Infuriating, yes. But a necessary window into our collective consciousness. I think this is what it's going to take though. Imagine if everyone in the world got as pissed off as you and I at the end of the doc, at the same time?

I literally laughed out loud in frustration when the doorman talked about how Koch, Mr. 25 Billion, the richest guy in the building, was the cheapest and worst tipper.

Unreal.

And the rationale of these guys.... gahhhhhh

Listening to them try to explain why the super rich should be taxed less, or why big business should not be "held back" and victimized by "regulations" .... lol.

It's worse than nails on a chalkboard.
It makes me laugh, but not really in a fun way.
 
I don´t know if money turn people literally into psychopaths... they can, I guess :) Its an interesting idea to think about, and to observe whether such an idea offends me or not. What money definitely do, however, is that they "alienate":

(1) In a capitalist economy, money alienate people by disassociating them from the products (and from the process) of their labour

(2) In a capitalist economy, money becomes a predominant medium of communication and interaction between people. In other words, people relate to other people through the medium of money. In this sense, money alienate people from each other.

This is what distinguishes money in capitalist and pre-capitalist economic systems: in both systems they are a means of exchange, but only in capitalism money serves as a double-alienating agent.

(NOTE: I didn´t make this up completely; it is my reading of Marx)
 
I wouldn't be so quick to balance my faith in humanity on the hallmark examples of it's dregs. I've gone a long way enduring the hard lessons of basing my conceptions of people direct from bad experiences with them. Reminded each time of what variety there is, how truly vast and diverse and glorious the fruits of this world are, of our race as a whole. It is a spectacle and an entertaining one, but no more an accurate or final verdict of our species as any entertainment put on real tv or the history or nature channels.
 
thank you for that interesting study, but your title is misleading

it should be, money turns americans into whatnots...

this study is quite limited by its sample size and the localized picking of test subjects

so there are many cultural factors involved in the outcome of the study

i sincerely doubt that the same result would be achieved with a high sample size of test subjects which for example believe in Karma

in any case, when you give power to people in the amount that they dont have to fear consequences of their actions directly then you will quickly see who they really are
 
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