Study: Your Brain Thinks Money Is A Drug

[synthesis]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111579154


The experiment and related ones are described in a research paper titled The Symbolic Power of Money (http://www.csom.umn.edu/assets/127771.pdf), published in the journal Psychological Science. Combined with earlier work, it maps out a curious connection. As far as your brain's concerned, money can act as a substitute for social acceptance, reducing social discomfort and, by extension, physical discomfort and even pain.

Researcher Xinyue Zhou, of the department of psychology at Sun Yat-Sen University in China, puts it in very human terms. "We think money works as a substitute for another pain buffer — love."

Past research has shown that a social relationship can make things hurt less. "If you dip your hand in hot water, if someone is standing there beside you, then you feel less pain," Zhou says. "That was a classic experiment."

Money as a substitute for social acceptance and love? Zhou laughs and admits that it's kind of sad. "All substitutes are sad."

inb4 "Chinese Communism bias!" :lol:

[Ele'ill]

edit- wrong thread
(http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/popeyes)

[Broletariat]

Doesn't commodity fetishism basically predict this?

[Revolutionair]

I put some money in my bong and I hit that shit all night long.

[synthesis]

Doesn't commodity fetishism basically predict this?

Not really. For one thing, the effect can be derived simply from handling money, not just by actually possessing it yourself.

[Outinleftfield]

Not really. For one thing, the effect can be derived simply from handling money, not just by actually possessing it yourself.

That means commodity fetishism has evolved to a point worse than what Marx predicted.

It's no wonder "money" substitutes for "social acceptance" and "love". We learn from an early age that society will love us more if we make more money. People throw around the word "success" in a way that is synonymous with "making money" and "Being rich" and people glorify and worship celebrities who are sometimes famous just for having lots of money. People see this and start feeling more loved an accepted when they have money.

It is natural for people to enjoy indulging material things, but the whole drive to accumulate things and make money to an extent greater than what might be needed for that purpose, in order to impress the neighbors or at worst trying to impress complete strangers is an invention of capitalism.

[synthesis]

I don't know that it's something that can be reduced to a specific mode of production. In a general sense, I think neuroscience is something that can be used to improve Marxism, not the other way around.

[ZeroNowhere]

Commodity fetishism is not a psychological theory.

[synthesis]

Commodity fetishism is not a psychological theory.

I apologize for being drunk, but is this in response to my argument or theirs?

[ZeroNowhere]

Theirs, I believe.

[Havet]

Your brain thinks sex is a drug too

[synthesis]

Theirs, I believe.

Right, that seems obvious to me now. Personally, I think it's interesting to consider that psychology, as far as I know, was still sort of a "pseudoscience" in Marx's time; I don't know if people put enough effort into considering Marx himself in the context of historical materialism.

[theAnarch]

Your brain thinks sex is a drug too

Yea but ive never heard of a private company undermining a third world government so they can have more sex.

not to mention sex is an important biological function.

[Havet]

Yea but ive never heard of a private company undermining a third world government so they can have more sex.

They might not undermine a third world government, but they sure undermine its citizens (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_slavery#Africa)


not to mention sex is an important biological function.

All i'm saying is that our brain rewards money and sex in the same way it rewards any other drug

[Outinleftfield]

Commodity fetishism is not a psychological theory.

But since it is real human beings who engage in economic activity it is natural to find connections between economics and psychology.

Commodity fetishism deals with the relations of human beings with each other as shaped by the capitalist system.

That would certainly impact psychology, in fact the individual's own observations growing up would lead them to participate more(or less) in this. As capitalism developed more individuals in that society would be even more obsorbed in commodity fetishism.

The challenge for socialists is to figure out what weakens commodity fetishism, what will expose it and the other ills of capitalism for what they really are, and convince people to resist them.

[ComradeMan]

It's all about becoming the alpha in the troop. Money, goods, commodity, power- dominance- guarantee my gene reproduction.

The Human Ape!!!

[Mo212]

This thread is sad...

Money is synonymous with power in capitalist society. People want the fine things in life, they don't want to have to work and obey their boss everyday 5-6 days a week year on year until they are dead.

This is why "money is a drug" because money represents the power to command resources and experiences people want.

You all really don't grasp that "commodity fetishism" isn't it, marx had no idea of the potentialities that lay within nature of the physical world, our high tech science and industry keeps producing things that are expensive that people want and are willing to do whatever it takes to get those things.

Many millions of people would be happy to enslave the third world to get their xbox and video games. You all don't understand how sick human beings really are. We don't care and it shows in our society.

Even you guys aren't even serious about your own beliefs, would you be willing to put your money where your mouths are and a significant chunk of what you have on the line to attack the system? It's easy to be an "internet revolutionary".

[Thirsty Crow]

Even you guys aren't even serious about your own beliefs, would you be willing to put your money where your mouths are and a significant chunk of what you have on the line to attack the system? It's easy to be an "internet revolutionary".
It's funny how certain frustrated individuals like to assume that people posting here in fact do not live and act outside the cyber domain.

Would I put my money where my mouth is?
Been there done that so fuck you.

[Revolution starts with U]

This thread is sad...

Money is synonymous with power in capitalist society. People want the fine things in life, they don't want to have to work and obey their boss everyday 5-6 days a week year on year until they are dead.

This is why "money is a drug" because money represents the power to command resources and experiences people want.

You all really don't grasp that "commodity fetishism" isn't it, marx had no idea of the potentialities that lay within nature of the physical world, our high tech science and industry keeps producing things that are expensive that people want and are willing to do whatever it takes to get those things.

Many millions of people would be happy to enslave the third world to get their xbox and video games. You all don't understand how sick human beings really are. We don't care and it shows in our society.

Even you guys aren't even serious about your own beliefs, would you be willing to put your money where your mouths are and a significant chunk of what you have on the line to attack the system? It's easy to be an "internet revolutionary".

Well, you obviously didn't read any responses in the thread... :rolleyes:

[Zanthorus]

Doesn't commodity fetishism basically predict this?

Commodity fetishism is not about a 'fetish' in the sense which the term is used in popular discourse as an attraction to an object. The term 'fetishism' in anthropology, the usage which reveals what Marx was trying to convey, means the ascription of mystical or supernatural powers to objects. The point of commodity fetishism is that within capitalist society the ascription of value to to products appears as something natural and inherent within the objects. Since labour under capitalism is both labour for the account of private individuals or entities, and labour which produces social use-values which are only of use to other individuals or social entities, the social character of human labour expresses itself through the medium of value, it takes on the form of a social relation between things.

[ComradeMan]

Commodity fetishism is not about a 'fetish' in the sense which the term is used in popular discourse as an attraction to an object. The term 'fetishism' in anthropology, the usage which reveals what Marx was trying to convey, means the ascription of mystical or supernatural powers to objects. The point of commodity fetishism is that within capitalist society the ascription of value to to products appears as something natural and inherent within the objects. Since labour under capitalism is both labour for the account of private individuals or entities, and labour which produces social use-values which are only of use to other individuals or social entities, the social character of human labour expresses itself through the medium of value, it takes on the form of a social relation between things.

Freudian Marxism:-

Commodity and sexual fetishism

Marx's theory of commodity fetishism has proven fertile material for work by other theorists since Marx, who have added to, adapted, or, as Marxist orthodoxy might see it, 'vulgarized' the original concept. Sigmund Freud's well-known but unrelated theory of sexual fetishism led to new interpretations of commodity fetishism, as types of sexually-charged relationships between a person and a manufactured object.

From a Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freudo-Marxism#Commodity_and_sexual_fetishism)

:tt2:

;)

[Dean]

Freudian Marxism:-

Commodity and sexual fetishism

Marx's theory of commodity fetishism has proven fertile material for work by other theorists since Marx, who have added to, adapted, or, as Marxist orthodoxy might see it, 'vulgarized' the original concept. Sigmund Freud's well-known but unrelated theory of sexual fetishism led to new interpretations of commodity fetishism, as types of sexually-charged relationships between a person and a manufactured object.

From a Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freudo-Marxism#Commodity_and_sexual_fetishism)

:tt2:

;)

Just want to point out that that doesn't contradict Zanthorus' point, in case you thought otherwise. If any of them thought that Marx was describing a sexual concept, they're wrong.

[ComradeMan]

Just want to point out that that doesn't contradict Zanthorus' point, in case you thought otherwise. If any of them thought that Marx was describing a sexual concept, they're wrong.

It wasn't an attempt to.
:tt2:

[NKVD]

Thank god I'm not addicted to this drug.

[synthesis]

The OP has nothing to do with sex whatsoever. It refers to the pain-negating effect of social acceptance and love (love being an element in neurology these days) and the ability of money to act as a substitute in the same way.