How much does money (or any desired good) influence a person on average?

Question

I'd like to know if there's any study about that, I'm specially interested if it determines how much it influences a certain person behavior in a certain given percentage and the quantities from where a person wouldn't do a certain thing but for more money they end up doing them.

I'm not discovering anything new saying that there are tasks we wouldn't do if we don't earn money, that's basically what most jobs are about. But point is it does not end in that, most people can end up doing things that go against their morals if they are given enough money. I even believe that most people would do anything that goes extremely against their morals if very huge quantities of money were given to them.

Are there studies on how much that influences the behavior of a person on average?

Answer 1

Here are two studies may be relevant to your question:

• Seeing green: Mere exposure to money triggers a business decision frame and unethical outcomes. The authors report that "individuals primed with money were more likely to demonstrate unethical intentions than those in the control group" and "money cues triggered a business decision frame, which led to a greater likelihood of unethical intentions and behavior." This article explains that the researchers "primed" the participants by showing them either "money-related" phrases or "neutral" phrases and measured how that affected their decisions in hypothetical scenarios or games. So even when there is no actual money involved, the study found that thinking about money can influence people's behavior.

• Social Class, Contextualism, and Empathic Accuracy. The authors report that "individuals of a lower social class are more empathically accurate in judging the emotions of other people." In this article, a study co-author points out that people with more modest financial resources need to depend on others more than people who are more able to solve their problems with money. This may give them more experience cooperating with people and developing empathy. So in this case it's the money that someone accumulates throughout their life that may prompt them to act in a less empathetic way.