4 research outputs found
A Dollar Is a Dollar Is a Dollar, or Is It? Insights From Childrenâs Reasoning About âDirty Moneyâ
Money can take many formsâa coin or a bill, a payment for an automobile or a prize for an award, a piece from the 1989 series or the 2019 series, and so onâbut despite this, money is designed to represent an amount and only that. Thus, a dollar is a dollar, in the sense that money is fungible. But when adults ordinarily think about money, they think about it in terms of its source, and in particular, its moral source (e.g., dirty money). Here we investigate the development of the belief that money carries traces of its moral history. We study children ages 5â6 and 8â9, who are sensitive to both object history and morality, and thus possess the component pieces needed to think that a dollar may not be like any other. Across three principal studies (and three additional studies in Appendix S1; NÂ =Â 327; 219 fiveâ and sixâyearâolds; 108 eightâ and nineâyearâolds), we find that children are less likely to want money with negative moral history, a pattern that was stronger and more consistent among 8â and 9âyearâolds than 5â and 6âyearâolds. These findings highlight pressing directions for future research that could help shed light on the mechanisms that contribute to the belief that money carries traces of its moral history.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/167547/1/cogs12950.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/167547/2/cogs12950_am.pd