Krátke zaujímavosti Short curiosities
Short curiosities
The psychological consequences of money
In 2006 realized Kathleen D. Vohs together with her colleagues a research about the psychological consequences which
money have. The main ascertaining was that money changes
not only people´s motivation but also their behavior toward
others. Results of nine experiments suggest that money contributes to the feeling of self-sufficiency when people prefer to
be free of dependancy, so they request less for help but they
are also less helpful toward others. Relative to other participants of research, people who had more money preferred to
play and work alone and without realizing it, they put more
distance between them and their new acquaintance.
However, we can not generalize these findings to all rich people, for example a lot of rich people donate the charitable
purposes. It is however good to realize some of these facts
early and to demonstrate by your behavior that the reality can
be other too.
Money illusion
The wrong identifying of subjective value of money with its
nominal representation is called the money illusion. It shows
itself as a tendency to think about money in terms of nominal
rather than real values. This can have consequences on the
incomes, transactions, perception of a fairness and ethics, investments and contracts. It shows itself the most in periods of
inflation and deflation when the real value of money is lower
or higher.
According to economist Fisher it is a serious defect, because
we use as the unit of value a thing which has a changing value. Money illusion is the most marked in three ways: price
stickiness, contracts and laws, discourses in formal media and
among people. These situations do not consider inflation and
deflation how could we rational expect.
Economists and also psychologists tried to explain the money
illusion. According to psychologists the nominal prices provide
a comfortable cue for determination of value of almost everything. The real prices are considered necessary to calculate
only in situations when it seems very important.
(Source: Shafir, Diamond & Tversky, 1997)
How does the happiness arise?
If you think that happiness is proportional to the amount of
money, you are wrong. The wealth makes people happy only
for a while because they get used to it fast. Therefore, there
have to be more factors which are the genetics and own activities. Researchers found out that approximately 50% of life
satisfaction is created by genetic factors, so there is a certain
predisposition of a man to be an everlasting optimist or a gloomy pessimist.
The importance of own activities for a feeling of happiness
and satisfaction is estimated on 40%. The advantage of these
activities is that we can alternate and choose them by our own
preferences. The remaining 10% is at government disposal
which can contribute to happiness and satisfaction through a
quality health service, education, environment and the level of
confidence in it.
Gambler´s fallacy
Gambler´s fallacy is a tendency to think that the future probabilities are influenced by the previous events, although they
remain unchange in fact. This heuristic or a certain abbreviation in thinking comes out from wrong assumption that if
a sequence of random events looks non-random, so there is
a certain regularity, the probability of turn is increasing. One
example is an estimation of which side of a coin will fall. If the
head fell more times in previous throws, according to this heuristic we will evaluate the probability of throwing an emblem
as higher. In fact, the probability is still the same - 50:50. This
fallacy is important to realize and not to underlie it especially in
economic decisions because it can have no small consequences on your terminal wallet condition.
(Source: Kahneman & Tversky)
How do the self-confident optimists decide?
Even if self-confidence and optimism are in everyday life regarded as the positive qualities, in the field of decision making an inclination to optimism ranks among the deviation
from rational decision making. The combination of self-confidence and optimism causes that people overestimate their
knowledges and the ability of control over the situation, on
the contrary they underestimate the risks in known situations
and have aversion to indefinitess. People with these qualities
prefer easily accessible informations and they are surprised by
events which are statistical explainable and so well-founded. If
you are however member of this group of people, the experts
have one recommendation for you. To remember besides your
successes also less successful situations keep records of them
and take them into consideration by your decision making.
Financial risk tolerance
Researches from the field of biology and neuroscience have
shown that there is a general inclination to risk in all spheres
of life. However, observations prove an inconsistent behavior
of people. A supporter of the adrenaline sports does not have
to be a smoker at the same time or a hazard player does not
have to like adrenaline sports. That means that he is tolerant
to risk in one situation, in other situation he avoids it or does
not look it up. One fact on which the scientist agreed is that
there is a certain personality trait which is the general inclination to risk behavior.
According to demographic factors are men, single people,
entrepreneurs and young people more predisposed to risk. A
share of people who are willing to accept a risk which is above
the average or high is however relatively low. It does not overreach a quarter of the population.
(Source: Faff, Hallahan & McKenzie)
Author: Mária Synáková
31