Six Ways to Manipulate Your Financial Behavior
Habits, behaviors, and emotions play a big role in how you manage your money. If you want to change a habit, it can help you understand the behavior behind it. Here are six ways to influence our behavior.
Writer J. Money points to a study by author Joseph Granny, who divided influence into the following six categories:
- Personal motivation
- Personal abilities
- Social motivation
- Social ability
- Structural motivation
- Structural ability
In her research, Granny breaks this down:
The first two areas, personal motivation and ability, refer to the sources of influence within a person (motives and abilities) that determine his behavioral choices. The next two, social motivation and ability, refer to how other people influence a person’s choices. The latter two, structural motivation and ability, encompass the role of non-human factors such as compensation systems, space, and technology.
He also provides a helpful drawing to better illustrate what he is talking about:
In the study, Granny and his colleagues studied the spending behavior of children. They gave the children’s research team $ 40 and seduced them with some really expensive candy. The point was to see how different temptations affect them. For example, one of the temptations was visual cues: there were photographs of children in the room eating candy. This represented structural ability. Granny presented seductive motives in each of the six categories and noted how children’s choices had changed.
When researchers removed the initial temptations and replaced each influence with smarter financial influence, the children were more likely to save money.
Of course, this is just one study. But it does have a little impact on personal finances. For example, J. Money writes:
How many of these things have we probably experienced this week alone? Delicious Testing at Costco or Trader Joes? Are your friends buying up great hits or planning to throw a party this weekend? Using credit cards instead of cash? What about advertising everywhere we look?
It helps to think about our influences, organized in this way. You have a better understanding of what affects your habits and why it affects them. Once you understand this, it will be much easier to resist these habits, correct and redirect them. Check out the research below and check out J. Money’s post for more information.
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