Thread: Greed affects memory?

I was just thinking, if greed can influence decisions, can it also affect memory?
I just conducted an experiment and people influenced with money had about 10%
correct more than people without influence.

Money is a motivating force, and motivation encourages performance.

Hmmm good point. I have never thought of it that way.

Can you supply us with more details about your study, Mr. Yang?

Originally Posted by MrYang

I was just thinking, if greed can influence decisions, can it also affect memory?
I just conducted an experiment and people influenced with money had about 10%
correct more than people without influence.

What one considers greed, another may consider fairness. Why do criminals steal? They believe that society has shortchanged them. Why do oil barrons rip off their customers? They believe that they deserve it and somehow justify their ways. How? The playing of the"Ultimatum Game" described in Richard Restack's The Naked Brain, shows that when making decisions involving conflict (is this fair? unfair?), the anterior insula, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and anterior cingulate cortex are activated. The circuit begins with the AI activated upon disgust at a real or percieved injustice, an attempt at appeasement and acceptance by the DLPC, and finally, a decision is made by the ACC. So greed is relative. People as individuals decide what is fair and unfair. I'm unsure of a direct connection between greed and memory. I hope this helps in some way...

Originally Posted by paralith

Can you supply us with more details about your study, Mr. Yang?

I drew and colored 10 everyday things on a piece of paper. Then i asked people around the age of 40 to participate in my experiment. I showed them the paper for 15 seconds and they are to remember as much as they could. I then asked other people (still at the same age requirements) to participate but this time, i said i would give them 5$ if they remembered all 10 things. They suprisingly got an averege of 10% more then people not influenced with money.

Now conduct the experiment again, offering no money, but telling the participants that the results of this test are closely correlated with social standing. I predict you will get a comparable result to the run with the monetary incentive.

Your first, control experiment offered little incentive of any kind to get the right answers. What you tapped into with the second experiment was not greed, but a desire to win. They may be related but they are not the same.

So they may be influenced by another variable other than greed?

I'm suggesting two things:
yes, they may be influenced by something other than greed.
secondly, your experiment does not unequivocally demonstrate that they are influenced by greed.

So how can I edit my experiment to measure only greed?

Carry out the experiment I suggested. If it does not produce the result I am predicting that would tend to confirm that greed was responsible for the observed improvement in scores when money was on offer.

If it does produce the same result then I'm not sure offhand how to modify it. There should be a way. I'll give it some thought.

alright ill tell you the results tomorrow. Good night.

Good luck.

Originally Posted by John Galt

Good luck.

not a part of science, my friend.

1. Greed is a nebulous concept. You need a clear definition of what you're testing, because I don't think think offering people five bucks works into greed. Pretty much any human is going to be interested in free money - but does that mean they are greedy?

2. How many people did you test in each group? What is their relative socioeconomic status? Would the background and/or current financial situation of some group members cause them to be more motivated by a five dollar prize than others?

3. What statistical tests did you use to measure the difference in performance between the two groups? By definition a certain amount of differences between two test groups can be expected as a result of chance; you need to make sure that the differences you saw were significantly greater than that.

4. Your simply telling your test subjects what the results of this test tend to show is not necessarily going to actually convince them that this is the case. In most experiments where such "suggestions" are given to test participants to see how it affects them, they are given reading or viewing material from some sort of authority that describes the results of previous studies. Control groups are given something neutral to read.

Greed is a nebulous concept.

Yeah, I agree with that statement. I cant recall which studies but many behavioral scientist agree that we as a species are set to feel loss much more then gain. One study in particular looked at Day traders. They found out that even with a little loss of say 5 dollars would be felt 5 times more then a gain of 100.... or something like that i am too lazy to find that book.

I always thought the the game deal or no deal was a good example of peoples behavior where it comes to large amounts of money. Or gambling but like an earlier poster said it would be very hard to limit it to jsut greed and not some other thing.

[/quote]