Hi everyone,
So everyone knows the game Monopoly right? (If you don’t I feel bad for you…) A classic family game night activity. Usually, Monopoly is a mix of skill, talent, and luck. However, what if those factors were thrown out the window? What if someone pulled the strings? This is what happened in a 2013 study about the poor and rich.
100 pairs of strangers were brought into a lab and with a coin flip decided who would be the “poor” and who would be the “rich” player. They would play a game of Monopoly. The rich player got twice as much money, they got to roll two dice while the poor player could only roll one, and when they passed “Go” they’d get twice the amount of money.
During the 15 minutes, the researchers watched the players. The rich player started moving around the board loudly, showed verbal and nonverbal signs of victory, became ruder to the poor player, and talked about their wealth. Rich players would say things like: “I’m going to buy out the whole board” or “I have so much money, I’m pretty much untouchable now”.
A bowl of pretzels was also on the side to see the eating behavior of the participants. The richer players started eating more of the snacks more frequently than the poorer players.
At the end of the games, the researchers asked the players what they did to win the Monopoly game, and they talked about the different properties and their strategies instead of the fact that they started out with more money or had better privileges than the other player.
Some similar experiments were conducted with real-life aspects. Researchers found that people with more expensive cars were more likely to break the law, while people with less expensive cars broke fewer laws.
Overall, I feel like this is a very interesting study. What do you think? When you’re playing Monopoly, do you notice the richer players following some of the aspects of the “rich” players in the experiment? I hope you enjoyed this post! Goodbye!
– A Koi named Skoi ♪┏(・o･)┛♪
CREDIT: TedEd – Paul Piff: Does Money Make You Mean?