[We hypothesized that] reminders of (a great deal of) money facilitate global, abstract mental construals … [while] reminders of expenditure or a little money should trigger more concrete mental representations. … Participants were primed with money or money-unrelated concepts. Money primes caused a preference for abstract over concrete action identifications (experiment 1), instigated the formation of broader categories (experiment 2), and facilitated the identification of global (vs. local) aspects of visual patterns (experiment 3). This effect extended to consumer judgments: money primes caused a focus on central (vs. peripheral) aspects of products (experiment 4) and increased the influence of quality of parent brands in evaluations of brand extensions. Priming with a little money (experiment 3) or expenditures (experiment 5) did not trigger abstract construals, indicating that the association between money and resources drives the effect. (more)
We’ve long known that power tends to induce far mode. So now we can say that the rich and powerful tend to think in a more far mode. That includes the entire world, since the world has been getting richer and more powerful. This plausibly explains why our “moral circles” have continued to widen over time, and helps us see why our era’s thinking is an especially deluded “dreamtime.”
