Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2013 May;142(2):301-6. doi: 10.1037/a0029288. Epub 2012 Jul 9.
The present research tested whether incidental exposure to money affects people's endorsement of social systems that legitimize social inequality. We found that subtle reminders of the concept of money, relative to nonmoney concepts, led participants to endorse more strongly the existing social system in the United States in general (Experiment 1) and free-market capitalism in particular (Experiment 4), to assert more strongly that victims deserve their fate (Experiment 2), and to believe more strongly that socially advantaged groups should dominate socially disadvantaged groups (Experiment 3). We further found that reminders of money increased preference for a free-market system of organ transplants that benefited the wealthy at the expense of the poor even though this was not the prevailing system (Experiment 5) and that this effect was moderated by participants' nationality. These results demonstrate how merely thinking about money can influence beliefs about the social order and the extent to which people deserve their station in life.
本研究旨在检验偶然接触金钱是否会影响人们对使社会不平等合法化的社会制度的认可。我们发现，与非金钱概念相比，金钱概念的微妙暗示会促使参与者更强烈地认可美国现行的社会制度（实验 1）和自由市场经济（实验 4），更强烈地断言受害者活该（实验 2），并更相信社会优势群体应该统治社会弱势群体（实验 3）。我们进一步发现，金钱的暗示会增加对有利于富人而牺牲穷人的自由市场器官移植制度的偏好，尽管这不是现行制度（实验 5），而且这种影响受到参与者国籍的调节。这些结果表明，仅仅思考金钱就可以影响人们对社会秩序的看法，以及人们对自己社会地位的认可程度。
