Feeling Blue? Try Counting Some Money

The next time you find yourself down in the dumps, grab a stack of money (it doesn't even have to be your own) and count it. According to the results of a new study, it'll cheer you up. Psychologists at the University of Minnesota and Florida State University ran a series of experiments on the "psychological, physical and social impact of money," publishing the results in Psychological Science.

One experiment involved giving one half of a group of volunteers eighty $100 bills to count. The other half of the group were asked to count a similar number of sheets of paper. After counting the money or paper, the volunteers then played a computer game in which they tossed a ball to three other players. The volunteers were told that the other players were real people, but they were actually computer-generated so that the researchers could either throw the ball to the volunteers or keep it away from them. Of those volunteers who were deprived of the ball in the game, the people who had counted money before playing reported "lower social distress" than the people who were given paper to count.

The researchers ran a couple of other revealing experiments, which you can read about here. What they all conclude is that money itself has a powerful and non-rational psychological influence on people. "The mere idea of money has considerable psychological power, enough to
alter reactions to social exclusion and even to physical pain," said one researcher.

This is mildly distressing, because it makes me wonder about how my own financial decisions are affected by the influence of money. Should I always keep a stack of hundred dollar bills around to count whenever I am feeling out of sorts? Should I count money before making an investment decision, or should I count blank sheets of paper?

Mark Frauenfelder – Editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine and the founder of the popular Boing Boing weblog, Mark was an editor at Wired from 1993-1998 and is the founding editor of Wired Online.

Mark Frauenfelder Credit.com contributor, editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine and the founder of the popular site Boing Boing, Mark was an editor at Wired from 1993-1998 and is the founding editor of Wired Online. He covers creative DIY projects and how-tos that will help you make the most of your money.