The value of money: on how childhood economic resources influence value assessments later in life

• We know that unlike Homo economicus, Homo sapiens is often influenced by allegedly irrelevant contextual cues when assessing value. However, only recently have individual differences in susceptibility to context effects been studied. We propose that individuals who grow up poor develop contextualized skills that protect them from blowing their budget and argue that stable value assessment is such a skill. We test this claim using six experimental paradigms of value assessments with ca. 1400 participants. We hypothesized that contextual cues have a stronger influence on the valuations made by the past rich compared to the past poor. Further, the theoretical foundation of this paper is based on two lines of influential research that have been criticized on methodological grounds. We therefore preregistered our study, improved interaction testing, and tested the replicability of previous findings. The results showed only anecdotal evidence that the past poor made more consistent valuations. Even though the past poor don’t seem to have a generalized ability for consistent valuations, we encourage a continued search for more specific and ecologically relevant skills essential for good money management that may have developed as a response to growing up poor. © 2018, © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

childhood poverty

context effects

evolutionary developmental psychology

scarcity

Valuation

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)