Dislike when it's for the money?

[theknightwhosaysni-NI]

Have you ever wondered why do we often start to dislike something when we do it for the money ?

I just read a chapter from a book of Professor of Behavioral Economics Dan Ariely that I found really interesting. I think it puts light on some social conditioning. This professor explains that we tend to behave differently when money is involved and when it's not.

This professor asked 3 group of students to make a contribution to an experiment (repetitively putting a circle in a square on a computer screen).
-The first group was paid 5 dollars.
-The second group was paid less than one dollar.
-The third group was asked to do it as a favour for him and thus they were not paid.

Guess who was the most efficient group ?--------> the third one, which is the one who was not paid. Slightly behind came the first group (paid 5bucks) and quite far in third position came the second group.

• Business behaviour Vs Friends behaviour : incompatible ?

On one hand, we usually don't mind helping out someone if we're asked for some help, especially if we like the person who's asking. (he calls this "social norms")
On the other hand, if we provide a service because it's our job we start to think in terms of demand and offer, prices, wages, cost benefits etc. and we expect to be paid according to the market prices. This is what Dan Ariely calls the "market norms", which are predominant in the business world.

For instance, if you invite your family and friends over for diner on a special occasion, you'll probably be happy to cook a wonderful meal for them. In this case, you are most likely not going to even think about making money out of that. If at the end of the meal, someone from your family says "so, how much is it? 200 dollars?", then it will seem odd and awkward.
Market norms are a kind of social conditioning that we keep out of our close relationships, and when someone proposes to pay, it feels as if these norms are intruding in our friendly circle.

Now imagine you're in "job mode", and you work at a restaurant. You agree to cook a wonderful meal only because you know that the "customer" will pay the price for it. It's a deal and it's normal.

We can see this difference of behaviour also with sex. When we have sex with our chosen partner, we usually want to share things such as love, pleasure and intimacy.
Now if we ask money for sex, it's a totally different thing. We enter the sex market.

It's an extreme example to show that we act differently when we put a price on something.
I believe that we are uncousciously socially conditionned to make a clear difference in our life between "business behaviour" and "friends behaviour".
As soon as money gets involved, people's mind starts running the "market norms behaviour software" and it changes their attitude.

• Staying counscious

As we grow more conscious, we have a hard time putting our life into different categories like that. We developp strong values and we expect more and more to not make any compromise. We want to live by our core values. (especially if we're Pavlinas readers )
I personnaly have a hard time being employed because most of the jobs out there require me to put my life into categories and to obey the "market norms" when I work.
I do not want to see someone as a random "customer", I want to only speak and interract with human beings, weather they're my friends, family or complete strangers, even if I'm selling something to them.

I think it's very enlightening to discover this social conditioning (I mean, the "market norms" people live by when they work). This conditioning has a momentum in us and we can recognize it as what it is.

If we're not aware of this, it's very difficult for wannabe lightworkers to focuson the creation part and to make money doing something we love, because as soon as we put a price on something, the socially conditioned "market norms" start to creep in uncounsciously. It gets in contradiction with our desire to give and to live in a friendly world.

I think being aware of these "market norms" is a good thing because we can recognize them as social conditioning and not let them be a contradiction to our desire to give. It's then possible to ask for money, put a price on a service or a goods, seal deals etc. without being scizophrenic and forgetting about our cores values.

Articles on Wikipedia :
Dan Ariely
Being Paid vs. A Friendly Favor
His book :
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

[Kingston]

Well said. It sure is a challenge to move beyond the standard ways of viewing markets en service.

I know a guy who has a successful freelance career by letting his costumers decide what his services have been worth. It's a paradigm shift, but it works for him. So it can be done.