The Impact Of Money On Self-Esteem:Evidence From ERP Study

Money is necessary to the satisfaction of such basic human needs as food, shelters, and reproduction, and has various effects on human behaviors. However, the question that how money impacts human mentally and behaviorally remains one of the most controversial topics. There are many assumptions concerning this, two of which have been related to the self:One is that money is required to satisfy two basic needs of the humanity, i.e., sense of control and self-esteem, while the other one is that money brings about or is related to self-sufficient orientations. Some researchers believe that money reduces distress and maintain self-esteem in the face of social exclusion. One important aspect of the self is self-esteem. According to studies of self(Vohs, Mead,& Goode,2006; Zhou & Gao,2008; Zhou, Vohs,& Baumeister,2009), the connections between money and self-esteem contribute to understanding the functions of self-esteem. In the perspective of research on decision making, the interactions between money and self-esteem explain the violations of money maximization. It is hypothesized that self-esteem is a metal variable when money exerts an influence on the humanity. A recent review of money and self-esteem suggested that the interactions between them may follow three principles:augmentation, substitution, and competition. A superior payoff augments the utilities of self-esteem. Money and self-esteem compensate one another to some extent when there is an option that allowed an abundance of one type of utility while lacks the other one. Money and self-esteem compete against each other when decision makers have to choose only one of them. However, the above view is primarily a theoretical assumption and indirect inference, there is no direct evidence of the specific impact of money on self-esteem. On the second, according to the different level of consciousness, self-esteem can be divided into explicit self-esteem and implicit self-esteem, it has yet to be verified that whether there are differences in the effect of money on these two types of self-esteem. In addition, being lack of neuroscience evidence, the above study about the relationship between money and self-esteem were based on behavioral experiments. Therefore, by means of time-related potential technique (Event-related potentials, ERP) tools, this study attempts to systematically examine the basis of neurophysiology of the impact of money on the basis of neurophysiology from two aspects of implicit self-esteem and explicit self-esteem.The material in previous research was not suit for the requirement of event-related potentials study. In study 1, pleasure, arousal, familiarity of 40 pictures was evaluated by 46 colleague students. As the result,10 pairs of pictures which not have significant differences on the three dimensions were selected. With cores of 20 pictures in pleasure, arousal and familiarity, the coefficient of inner consistency of individual dimension in this study were 0.885,0.873 and 0.842, the outcome showed this study was having good credibility and the results are reliable.In study 2, the subjects were asked to finish an explicit self-esteem test both under money priming and neutral priming condition. Under each of the conditions, subjects were first showed the primes (i.e., money/neutral pictures), and then saw a stimulus (i.e., self/other words). After an adjective stimulus presented, subjects were asked to determine whether it was corresponded with the word followed. The scalp event-related brain potential analysis revealed that the amplitude of P300 was more positive in the neutral condition in self-evaluation condition than in the other-evaluation one. However, in the money prime condition, there was no significant difference between the above conditions. It was concluded that the money prime has a positive effect on explicit self-esteem, that it compensated the loss of self-esteem, and that the impact may be related to emotional activation.Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were measured when the participants finished the implicit association test (IAT) both under money priming and neutral priming condition in study 3. The implicit association test (IAT) is a general-purpose procedure for measuring the strengths of automatic association between concepts (Greenwald et al.,1998). The self-esteem IAT is a computerized categorization task that measures automatic associations of self-relevant and non-self-relevant words with positive-meaning and negative-meaning words. During the task, participants press corresponding keys to categorize target words that appear at the center of the computer screen. Each target word is selected from the self or non-self lists or from lists of positive (e.g., smart) or negative (e.g., foolish) words. In a congruent condition, self and positive target words are selected by pressing the same key, whereas other and negative target words are selected by pressing another key. In an incongruent condition, self and negative target words are selected by pressing the same key, whereas other and positive target words are selected by pressing another key. Scalp event-related brain potentials analysis revealed that in the money prime condition the amplitude contrast of P300 elicited by self items between congruent condition and incongruent condition was stronger than the neutral condition. The priming of money concept of money enhances the connection between self and positive concept, and had an augmentation effect on implicit self-esteem.From the study above, the following conclusions are put forward:The effect of money on self-related judgments was positive both on explicit and implicit self-esteem, although the effect starts on explicit and Implicit self-esteem in different way. But the specific internal mechanism of this effect is inconclusive; it is still need us to do more in-depth exploration.