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Jaimin Suresh
PSY 2012-025
09/21/2020
Dr Fallon-Goodman
Aiyana Rice

Upon reading the research article ‘Can’t Buy Me Love (or Friendship): Social Consequences

of Finally Contingent Self-Worth’ written by Deborah E. Ward, Lora E. Park, Kristin

Naragon- Gainey, Ashley V. Williams and Han Young Jan. I could see that the purpose of

this article is to answer the simple question of Can Improve Relationships? At the start of

their research they carried out a preliminary study which using existing data which allowed

them to analyse links between Financial CSW, perceptions of pressure, social outcomes and

time allocation. They got participants using online surveys and split them into groups Study

A and Study B. In study A they had 821 participants and they hypothesized that those with

more money would directly relate to more of them feeling lonely due to spending less time

with their family or friends. In study B they had 333 participants, they hypothesized that

those with higher income will be related to ‘lower feelings of social connection via greater

received time pressure.’ The results of these studies support both hypothesise.

Regarding variables for this survey there were no manipulated variables as this was an

observation study. For the measured variables they were assessing self-worth so they were

asking their participants to report how they allocate their time in a given week by giving them

series of activities such as how long they were alone for, how long were they were awake and

not doing work-related activities. They also will ask them how much time each week they

would ideally spend as well as feel they ought to spend on each of these activities. At the end,

they will ask them to indicate using a scale and a forced-choice format, how often they would

choose to spend alone or working vs. socializing or with their family. The will also assess

financial goals and materialism, they will use a ten-point personality inventory, a basic needs

satisfaction scale and demographic items, such as age, gender, ethnicity, marital status,
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Jaimin Suresh
PSY 2012-025
09/21/2020
Dr Fallon-Goodman
Aiyana Rice

employment status, no. of hours worked per week, how many children they have, what their

income is before taxes and whether English is their language.

They carried out three studies to test their theory. The first study was to use the full model

and test the preliminary studies again. There were 345 participants 42.6% were male. In the

article they say that they were recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to complete the

online study and in return they got $1. The breakdown of the races for this group was

comprised of 76.2% were Caucasians, 9.6% were African Americans, 7% were Asians, 4.1%

were Hispanic and 3.2% were from other ethnicities.

The first hypotheses were that they would expect that Financial CSW would show that

greater perceived time pressure would mean less time spent with family and friends and due

to this they would feel lonely.

The results of the first study is that participants who said that their self-worth was based on

financial success were predicted to experience worse social outcomes such as being lonely or

feeling disconnected from society due to perceiving greater time pressure to make money

leading to less time spent outside of working with family or friends. Study B showed that due

to greater time pressure, their social situations were worse off due to them being under

pressure at work to make money. What they concluded was that perceptions of autonomy,

rather that time pressure, best accounted for the relationship between basing self-worth on

financial success.

The second study was essentially a replicate of the first ones to further prove and try to

replicate their results by using a large sample of working adults. Due to this being a larger

study, there were 940 participants 26.7% of which were male. They were recruited using
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Jaimin Suresh
PSY 2012-025
09/21/2020
Dr Fallon-Goodman
Aiyana Rice

Qualtrics which is an online platform which offers a crowd-sourcing service that allows

researchers the control of which questions they want to ask. 75.8% of participants were

Caucasian, 8.8% were African- American, 7.2% of Hispanics, 5% were Asians, 3% were

from other ethnicities.

The hypothesis for study two is that they expect that both perceived time pressure and time

spent with friends and family will mediate the relationship between Financial CSW and

social outcomes.

The results for this study was that those who based their self-worth on financial success were

expected to experience worse social outcomes such as loneliness. The results supported the

supported that basing self-worth on financial success led to lesser social outcomes and that

those who believed it, had noticed that their social life suffered.

In the final study, study three they examined the ecological validity of the finding using a

daily dairy design. They expected to replicate the first two studies to further prove their

points. They had 283 participants which they got from a selection of psychology students at a

large university. 41.1% were Male. 55% were Caucasian, 28% were Asian, 9% were Black,

3% were Hispanic and the remaining 4% listed as other. The students took part in lab

exercises initially where they would complete tasks such as recording their opinions on

materialism, what their financial aspirations were. Then after they were questioned for 14

straight days.

The researchers concluded that those that had a higher priority in putting time and effort into

trying to make money had experienced negative social outcomes as they found that whilst

they were working, they were neglecting their family and friends and had no time for a social
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Jaimin Suresh
PSY 2012-025
09/21/2020
Dr Fallon-Goodman
Aiyana Rice

life. Furthermore, they found that those with perceived time pressure and spent time with

family and friends had a good balance between making money and having a social life.

In the press article I found that they presented information in a good format that was clear to

understand. In the press article there was not has much statistics as there were in the research

article.

The difference between a correlation study and an experiment is that in a correlation study

the researchers are identifying two types of variables and looking to see if they have any

relationship. An experiment uses an independent variable and a dependent variable with this

an experiment tests the effect that the independent variable has on the dependent variable.

The kind of study that was represented in the research article would be a correlation

experiment as they were testing the relationship between finance and social life. They found

that those who spent more time focusing on their finances had less of a social life, leading

them to have an increase in depression or just feeling like they are in isolation.

In the press article they found that ‘spending more time and emphasis on making money over

having a social life, cost the individual in terms of how happy they are. However, they

concluded that they don’t have an exact final answer but there is significant evidence that

these financial pressures play an important role.

With these articles there are dangers in misreporting the findings as if some party were to

misreport a finding then they would be discredited and would not get much attention from the

public due to them now being seen as unreliable and maybe even lousy for not double

checking the facts first.

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Jaimin Suresh
PSY 2012-025
09/21/2020
Dr Fallon-Goodman
Aiyana Rice

The roles of scientists in science communication is for them to carry out several different

experiments and report their findings as it will effect society, as with this one about finances

and happiness if we were to see that spending more time being focused on finances would

lead to sadness, I am pretty sure people would rather be happy than sad therefore, they would

try to avoid focusing all their time on money and instead enjoy their time with friends and

family.

The role and responsibility of journalists in science communication is for them to report the

findings that the scientists found and present it in a manner that is easily accessible for the

regular public so that they can understand the information without having to be a scientist.
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Jaimin Suresh
PSY 2012-025
09/21/2020
Dr Fallon-Goodman
Aiyana Rice

References

Ward E. Deborah & Park E. Lora. (2020). Can’t Buy Me Love (or Friendship): Social

Consequences of Finally Contingent Self-Worth. file:///C:/Users/jaimi/Downloads/Ward

%20et%20al%20(2020).%20Cant%20buy%20me%20love.pdf

Social Outcomes of Financially Contingent Self-Worth. https://osf.io/3qfzd?

view_only=ebb22c7db9f04e72acc2f4c086e2fa4f

Frishberg, Hannah. (2020). Valuing money over family and friends leads to misery, study

says.

https://nypost.com/2020/04/10/investing-life-in-money-leads-to-lack-of-community-study/