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Curr Psychol (2012) 31:381385
DOI 10.1007/s12144-012-9154-1
Peter Kardos & Emanuele Castano
Published online: 14 November 2012# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2012
Abstract Building on magical contagion literature, we show that the way in which money is acquired colors the perception of the money itself, and thus affect the way it is spent. In a hypothetical scenario participants who imagined acquiring money immorally (versus morally) experienced more guilt about the way in which they acquired it and spent less of it. Furthermore, in the immoral, but not the moral condition, guilt correlated significantly with spending: the greater the guilt, the less money was spent. We interpret this finding as stemming from individuals desire not to handle what they see as dirty money.
Keywords Money. Morality. Magical contagion . Spending . Guilt
Pecunia non olet!Money doesnt stink!said Vespasian, the Roman emperor, to his son Titus, when the heir complained about the disgusting nature of a new tax on urine collection from public urinals (Dio Cassius, 1925). Vespasian even held a coin to Titus nose to demonstrate that the moneys dirty origin would not make it smell.
While money from a tax on urinals does not smell of urine, individuals do have a negative emotional reaction to objects associated with disgusting or immoral events. The psychological literature on magical contagion (Nemeroff and Rozin 1994; Rozin et al. 1986, 2007) shows, for example, that people would rather not wear a sweater previously worn by an evil person or drink a glass of orange juice if it was previously touched by a sterilized cockroach. By extension, an object associated with an immoral person or behavior is perceived as morally contaminated, and can in turn contaminate those who come into contact with it. Thus, individuals want to distance themselves from these objects.
The magical essence imagined to actually carry the contaminating attribute called mana in archaic culturescan be material, spiritual or linguistically
P. Kardos (*) : E. Castano
Department of Psychology, New School for Social Research, 80 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011, USAe-mail: [email protected]
Money Doesnt Stink. Or Does It? The Effectof Immorally Acquiring Money on Its Spending
382 Curr Psychol (2012) 31:381385
associative and varies according to the contagious entity and the type of contamination (Hejmadi et al....