Are girls afraid of money?

The real meat of this awesome link is in the comments deconstructing, critiquing, and musing on the article. Some gems include thoughts on if she's really testing girls' willingness to alienate a senior mentor by stealing from them, a lengthy discussion on societal / collaborative decision making... There's more. read it!

Control group?

It may be interesting to note that this experiment wasn't repeated on 15 male Georgetown mentees, so we really have no basis of comparison, the author simply assumes the boys would have taken the money.

I find it odd that the author matter-of-factly concludes that the girls had a dysfunctional relationship with money. There are plenty of other conclusions that could have been drawn.

For my part, with the money on the desks, I probably would've gathered it all up if I was the first one in the room and turned it in to the leader of the session or campus police. With someone holding up a $20 and asking who wanted it, yeah, I would've immediately asked for it.

I give her full marks for posing the question but only about half credit for follow-up.

The question is solid, it suggests a variety of experiments;

o Put 'coupons' of $20 value on some of the desks.

o Put 'jewelry' of $20 (approx) value on some of the desks

o Put a 'Logo' shirt on some desks (Logo from the 'presenting' company)

o Put a 'Logo' clothing where the logo is different on each article and for different designers.

o Put a 'knicknack' (thing SWAG like) on each desk.

Do the experiments with boys and with girls. Ideally all college students, and preferably sophomores (since as freshmen their cultural values have not fused as much as they have by the time they are sophomores)

Three things you want to test:

1) Does 'ownership' change behavior?

2) Does 'commercial promotion' (coupons/logos) change it into something you are expected to take.

3) Does perceived value permute the results.

And of course the whole girl/guy thing.

In my experience I've met people for whom money was a goal (it was the having they desired most) and some for whom money was a tool (do I have enough to make x happen?). A smaller number for whom money was a means of influence.

More likely, girls are afraid of being ostracized by their peer network for destabilizing the status quo. Put money where nobody would see it being picked up, and you might get quite different behavior. Put it where everyone can see it being picked up (or infer the probability that it was picked up) is very different. Acting on one's own behalf without even checking what one's peer network thinks signals an indifference to their opinions - a memory which will probably last far longer than the $20 benefit.

I don't really believe that this is a "girl problem." Being timid of challenging hierarchy by claiming shared resources is rational, and creating norms that then advantage you with no-one else the wiser is a standard game-theoretically-optimal response. Both men and women are capable of, and frequently participate in, this mode of thought--just look at politics--but in at least some subset of men, this drive is overridden with another one that does game-theoretically sub-optimal things for low chances of high rewards.

Now why men have this extra drive, I'm not qualified to answer, not having studied much evolutionary psychology; but I would say that there's probably some subconscious collusion going on by all parties to defer to "alpha males," that will allow this strategy to be optimal when one can signal such traits.

I remember a financial advisor (a woman) once said that when the male spouse dies its at least an 80% chance the female spouse didn't know anything about their finances. I asked her was that due to their age set and she said no, she finds about the same split with the younger couples she advises as well.