Preface II | The Mind-Reading Power of Money
Psychology is a world of mind-reading, and every school in that world has its own signature trick. Emotion experts infer what people are thinking and feeling from microexpressions; personality experts sort people into categories with questionnaires and tests; cognitive neuroscientists put on the all-seeing eyes of brain imaging equipment to peer into the mind… All the experts in this world pull out every trick they have, using the tiniest clues in behavior and physiology to uncover the mysteries of how the human mind works.
Professor Xinyue Zhou is a top practitioner in this world, but her signature trick sounds, at first, rather unconventional. Her mind-reading prop is money.
Professor Xinyue Zhou has made a name for herself with a series of money studies, and her reputation has traveled far. In my impression, although more and more Chinese psychology researchers have produced top-tier findings that can stand alongside the work of scholars abroad in recent years, studies like Professor Zhou’s—both exceptionally hard-core in academic quality and able to break out of the academic circle to be reported by media in China and abroad and enthusiastically discussed by online users—are still exceedingly rare.
The earliest study to break out of the academic circle was the one showing that counting money can relieve pain. What? Simply counting money can ease pain? That’s right. In this study, published in the top psychology journal Psychological Science, Professor Zhou and her collaborators found that counting money can relieve physical pain, reduce the anxiety of social rejection, and even boost people’s mental strength, making them more confident and satisfied. Beyond marveling at the entertaining conclusion, if we think it through, we see that the study reveals how money may provide a broad form of psychological protection. Once people are under that protection, their minds and behavior undergo a series of subtle changes.
Many of Professor Zhou’s later studies came with the same quality: counterintuitively amusing at first hearing, then thought-provoking on further reflection. No wonder her findings repeatedly became media darlings, receiving wide coverage in China and abroad, including from Nature and the BBC.
So can this formidable weapon in Professor Zhou’s hands—money—be used for mind-reading, to help us better understand ourselves? Of course it can.
Conventional wisdom tells us that money is an external possession: we are not born with it, and we cannot take it with us when we die. But after reading Professor Zhou’s book, we can deeply appreciate that money is far more than an external possession. It shapes our minds at every moment we are alive; and some of the hidden sides of human nature that are hard to observe often reveal themselves in full through our interactions with money.
The human mind is shaped by money, and it also reveals itself through money. So if you want to understand someone, why not look at how they interact with money? Understanding human nature through the interaction between people and money is the money mind-reading that Professor Zhou demonstrates in this book.
On one hand, money mind-reading lets us observe how the mind is shaped by money.
For example, from the study showing that counting money can relieve pain, we have already grasped that money can give people a powerful sense of psychological security: when you have food stored at home, you don’t panic when trouble comes. So where does this sense of security lead people’s behavior? Some wealthy people become confident and bold because of it. Their boldness is rooted in the security money provides. But other wealthy people become self-centered and lose their empathy for the same reason. Several studies cited in the book show that some wealthy people rarely manage to put themselves in others’ shoes when thinking through a problem, which makes them seem arrogant in many situations. Why? Because if money can help them solve most problems, other people no longer seem very important to them, and they lose the motivation to understand others.
We may have heard terms like “poor people’s mindset” and “rich people’s mindset,” and have a vague impression of how money steers people’s behavior. But after reading the research examples in this area, we are still surprised by how subtly and complexly money influences the human mind.
On the other hand, money mind-reading lets us observe how hidden aspects of the mind reveal themselves through money.
For example, the book mentions an interesting phenomenon in consumer behavior called the “functional excuse”: when sellers add practical functions to their promotion of luxury goods, people become more willing to buy them. Consumers buying luxury goods clearly care about the brand premium, but they seem able to place an order with a straight face only after finding themselves an excuse to “pay for the function.” Why? Perhaps because most consumers take “frugality” for granted as a socially approved virtue, so when they plan to buy a luxury item, they unconsciously take on a sense of guilt. A practical function gives them the perfect self-deceiving excuse: “I’m not buying this luxury watch to show off; it’s because it keeps time accurately.” In this way, the guilt of buying luxury goods is greatly reduced. Through this act of consumption, the moral constraints hidden in people’s hearts become clearly visible.
The human heart is hard to fathom, but the many studies and cases in this book vividly show us how to dig out people’s “truth” from the ways they make money, spend money, and view money.
“The gentleman understands righteousness; the petty person understands profit.” Money was considered vulgar, and respectable people in ancient times looked down on it. But in the modern world, where money gets everywhere, how can we claim to understand ourselves or the world if we don’t understand money?
This book leads readers to understand righteousness through profit, and to grasp the great principles hidden in the most worldly of things. It presents precisely the view of money that a respectable person living in the modern world ought to have.
Zhichao Wei
Psychology popular-science writer
May 2020
Leave a Reply