content: text: [markets] build loyalty and-more important-make people want to extend themselves to the
degree that corporations need today: to be flexible, concerned, and willing to pitch in. That's
what a social relationship delivers." (page 90)

content: text: Hence, in the less-predictable world of Homo sapiens, businesses must decide the extent to which
they participate with their employees and customers in monetary and/or social markets.

content: text: As a follow-on to Heyman and Ariely's (2004) experiments exploring the payment-effort trade-off,
Vohs et al. (2006) sought to understand the behavioral psychology underscoring the trade-off. In its
most general terms, the authors' hypothesis is that money makes Homo sapiens feel self-sufficient and
behave accordingly. When reminded of money, people desire to be free from dependency upon others
and prefer that others not depend upon them. Vohs et al. designed several experiments to test this
hypothesis from a variety of angles.

content: text: In one experiment, the authors found that participants (a sample of University of Minnesota
students) who were reminded about money-both Monopoly money and real money-in the context
of a series of word descrambling tasks worked longer at the tasks than participants in a non-money-
primed control group before requesting help from the experimenter.25 In subsequent experiments
with different groups of students, Vohs et al. found that (1) participants in a high-money treatment
worked significantly longer than participants in a low-money treatment before asking for help from
another available participant, (2) participants in a money-primed treatment volunteered to help code
fewer data sheets than did participants in the non-money-primed control condition, (3) participants
in a high-money treatment volunteered to gather fewer pencils that had spilled onto the floor than
did participants in a low-money treatment, and (4) participants in a money-primed treatment donated
significantly less money to a university student fund than participants in the non-money primed
control. Three final experiments tested the effects of money on social intimacy, desire to engage in
leisure activities alone, and preference to work alone. As expected, participants who were primed with
money ahead of time were subsequently less socially intimate and exhibited a stronger preference for
engaging in leisure activities and working alone.

content: text: So yes, Vohs et al.'s experiments suggest that money makes Homo sapiens feel self-sufficient and
behave accordingly.

content: text: PRICE AND THE PLACEBO EFFECT

content: text: Is it possible that the magnitudes of placebo effects experienced by Homo sapiens (e.g., through medical
therapies or medications) are somehow influenced by the prices we pay for them? To investigate
this possibility, Waber et al. (2008) studied the effect of price on a group of Homo sapiens' analgesic
responses to placebo pills. Over 80 healthy volunteers in Boston, MA were recruited via an online
advertisement to participate in a field experiment where each participant was informed by a brochure
about a purported new opioid analgesic recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The
opioid was described as similar to codeine but with a faster onset time. In reality, and not disclosed
to the participants, the pill was a placebo. After randomization, half of the participants were informed
that the drug had a regular price of $2.50 per pill ("regular price"), and half of the participants that

content: text: 25. The descrambling task consisted of 30 sets of five jumbled words. Participants created sensible phrases using four of the
five words. In the control and play-money treatment, the phrases primed neutral concepts (e.g., "cold it desk outside is"
became "it is cold outside"). In the real-money treatment, 15 of the phrases primed the concept of money (e.g., "high a salary
desk paying" became "a high-paying salary"), whereas the remaining 15 were neutral phrases. Participants in the play-
money treatment were primed with money by a stack of Monopoly money in their visual periphery while completing the
neutral descrambling task.

content: text: 220 ARTHUR J. CAPLAN