New Sci­en­tist pro­vides a com­pre­hen­sive sum­mary of stud­ies look­ing at the psy­chol­ogy of money. There are some fas­ci­nat­ing find­ings here, includ­ing a study show­ing that “sim­ply think­ing about words asso­ci­ated with money seems to makes us more self-reliant and less inclined to help oth­ers [and] just han­dling cash can take the sting out of social rejec­tion and even dimin­ish phys­i­cal pain”.

Our rela­tion­ship with money has many facets. Some peo­ple seem addicted to accu­mu­lat­ing it, while oth­ers can’t help max­ing out their credit cards and find it impos­si­ble to save for a rainy day. As we come to under­stand more about money’s effect on us, it is emerg­ing that some people’s brains can react to it as they would to a drug, while to oth­ers it is like a friend. Some stud­ies even sug­gest that the desire for money gets cross-wired with our appetite for food. And, of course, because hav­ing a pile of money means that you can buy more things, it is vir­tu­ally syn­ony­mous with sta­tus — so much so that los­ing it can lead to depres­sion and even sui­cide. In these cash-strapped times, per­haps an insight into the psy­chol­ogy of money can improve the way we deal with it.

*The orig­i­nal arti­cle has, since post­ing this, gone behind a pay­wall. Simoleon Sense has some exten­sive excerpts.