Why you should use cash

Cash keeps you honest.
Honest with yourself; honest with your spouse; honest with the person or business whose money has been entrusted to you.

In Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational, he relates several sets of experiments that he and his colleagues run to test people's honesty. Students answer some questions, add up their scores, and are rewarded a small amount for each correct answer. There is a control group; a group who can cheat to some degree; and a group who can cheat completely if they wanted to. Those who can cheat, do - but not by very much. Then the researchers add in other factors.

They begin with finding out whether an honour code helps reduce cheating - and it not only reduces it, it eliminates it altogether:

So we learned that people cheat when they have a chance to do so, but they don't cheat as much as they could. Moreover, once they begin thinking about honesty - whether by recalling the Ten Commandments or by signing a simple statement - they stop cheating completely. In other words, when we are removed from any benchmarks of ethical thought, we tend to stray into dishonesty. But if we are reminded of morality at the moment we are tempted, then we are much more likely to be honest.

Now comes the factor of cash versus objects. They repeat the same experiment, but this time, instead of rewarding correct answers with money, they reward participants with tokens, which they then exchange for money. In other words, the cash is at one remove.

The results are salutary: when given the chance to cheat and the reward is in tokens (not real money), the average rate of cheating doubled. Not only this, but a proportion of those in the token group cheated all the way or as much as was possible (claiming all correct answers).

This means that not only did the tokens "release" people from some of their moral constraints, but for quite a few of them, the extent of the release was so complete that they cheated as much as was possible.

Ariely discusses a number of possible uses for this research, along with the broad caution that our current trend towards a cashless society might hold some distinct disadvantages.
His finding also translate into our everyday relationship with money: it is easier to cheat ourselves when we deal in credit or bank-account-numbers, not cash. Before you convince yourself that you can spend your savings on that new TV, or that adding the extra magazine and chocolate won't add too much to the grocery bill, try paying for that desired object in cash (or even just picturing the cash). I guarantee you will see the purchase differently and, if you are saving for something else, it might just stop you cheating on your own goals.
I'm considering trying it out on my boys: keeping their pocket money in cash so they can see how much they've saved - or how much they plan to spend. Watch this space... 

Reading right to the end

I finally finished reading a book that's been on my shelf for a few years. Called "Incognito", it has the sub-title "the secret lives of the brain" and its author David Eagleman sets out to address such questions as why (or how) your foot hits the brake-pedal even before you are consciously aware of danger ahead.
Some of the material is reasonably straightforward and easy to grasp; other parts - especially where science meets philosophy, as in one section about blame and justice - well, other parts are harder and require concentrated swathes of reading-time that I don't often have. I just couldn't seem to manage to get to the end.


The strange thing was that, when I picked up the book again, determined to finish it, I discovered that I had almost finished; in fact, the final chapter was left, and it was a true "concluding" chapter in that it summed up all the key ideas in the book. I felt both relieved and pleased, and at the same time a bit annoyed at myself: I had stopped just before the end. As I write that down, I realise it's something - a phenomenon - I've read about elsewhere: that we sometime give up just before we are actually about to reach our goal.

That's quite a strange discovery: in completing the book, I not only received a re-cap of all the main points, but I received a reminder of a quite different lesson altogether.

Your brain is much, much more complicated than you realize.
And you are much, much closer to your goal than you think you are.

Disquieting reassurance

An alarm system is supposed to make me feel safer, isn't it? Why then does part of me feel less secure?

We had an alarm system installed today, and after the installers had tested it and showed us how it worked and driven away, I found myself feeling upset and a bit shaken.

I have never felt the need of an alarm system - still do not, actually. Our area is very safe and quiet, and I never feel anxious when on my own at home. We do have burglar guards on the windows (lovely "clear bars") and security gates on the doors; but you can open our garden gate and walk up the front door, which I like. More and more, we are cut off from each other behind gates and walls and electric fences, so I like bucking the trend and staying accessible.

What changed? My dear husband had the opportunity to travel overseas, and arranged for an alarm system to help protect his precious family while he is away. After some debate and after downsizing the original quote, we agreed on a simple, effective system and he boarded his plane, leaving me to see to the installation of the system and learn how to operate it.

So why the negative emotions? I feel it goes something like this:

If I have an alarm system, it must mean there is something to be alarmed about - something against which I and my family need to be protected. Admitting an alarm system admits too that the world is not as safe as we like or pretend. It doesn't quite go so far as to invite attack; but it admits the possibility.

It is this admission that has me uneasy and sad when you might expect me to feel relieved and reassured. I am alarmed, dear friends, by the alarm.