Abstract:

Money plays an important role in people’s daily life. Many studies have demonstrated that even subtle reminder of money will influence human behaviors. Empirical researches suggested that money cues had triggered a state of self-sufficiency, economic mind-set, free-market values and self-interested identity (social-cognitive model). As a result, participants whose money concepts were primed showed less altruistic pro-social behavior, less commonweal pro-social behavior, less relationship pro-social behavior and less trait pro-social behavior than those not been primed of money. There are many questions should be further explored: (1) The effects of money on pro-social behavior being extended to cover organizational management; (2) The moderate effect of socioeconomic status between money priming and pro-social behavior; (3) The different effect of time on pro-social behavior compared to money; (4) The neural mechanisms of money priming effects on pro-social behavior.

Key words: money priming, pro-social behavior, self-sufficiency, economic mind-set, free-market values