Money Priming Can Change People’s Thoughts, Feelings, Motivations, and Behaviors: An Update on 10 Years of Experiments

Kathleen D. Vohs · 2013 · social-psychology · 10.1037/xge0000091 · record money2013-money-priming-can-change-people-s
tag layer · index · concepts · authors · עברית

Where this record's text came from. faceted 2026-08 by reading the locally held text (pdftext); every evidence string verified as an exact substring of that text before merging. Vohs paper: the queue metadata says 2013 with no venue, but the article text itself carries the running header 'MONEY PRIMING 10 YEAR UPDATE' and the copyright line naming Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2015, Vol. 144, No. 4, e86-e93 — the 2013 in the queue appears to refer to Caruso et al. (2013), the target of the commentary. Replication status is set to 'contested' on the paper's own words: it reports both a failed replication ('Quotation withheld') and a body of supportive and replicating experiments (the bolded rows in Tables 1 and 2). The relation to Vohs et al. (2006) was NOT tagged as 'replicates' because the paper attributes those replications to third parties (Gueguen & Jacob, Pfeffer & Devoe), not to itself. The two long effect-size tables extracted as continuous run-on text; no quotes were taken from them. Friis paper: Table 4 came out of PDF extraction as scrambled single characters (lines of the form '1 1 0 . 0'), so nothing was quoted from any table; all quotes come from prose sections. Friis claim type is 'existence' rather than 'method' because the contribution is the demonstration that the three nudges produce effects (and different ones), not the invention of a technique. Claim relations for Friis were limited to the two places where the authors explicitly compare their own result to prior work; the many background citations (e.g. Meengs and colleagues on vegetable variety) were left out because the paper does not state a relation between them and its own findings. 2026-08-19 and 2026-08-25 schema-0.3 passes: every quote verified as an exact substring of the staged text and anchored at merge time; concept terms verified present; every edge endpoint an existing node.

This record’s own method is review, and the tags below follow from that. A review’s findings, quantities and statistics are things stated IN this paper, and some of them report results obtained elsewhere. 1 tag on this page names the author the result belongs to. Measured across every review in this corpus, 81% of a review’s tags carry no citation at all — most of them are the review speaking. The corpus does not adjudicate the rest: read an unmarked tag as a claim this paper makes, not necessarily one it made first.

How to read this page. The article itself is not reproduced here — this paper is not cleared for redistribution, so what follows is the tag layer alone. The evidence sentences are withheld with the article. The table at the foot lists every tag the record carries; each row names the facet it belongs to, and the whose words column says whether the tag records the paper's own wording or the tagger's sentence about the paper. Every tag links to each other paper in the corpus carrying it. The machine-readable edition of the same thing is the TEI file beside this one, where the tags live in standOff, and the article is at its publisher via the link below. When we have changed our mind. Some entries in the table begin with a word in capitals and the reason for it. EVIDENCE CORRECTED — the finding still stands, but we had quoted the wrong sentence from the paper, and the quotation has been replaced with the right one. RETRACTED — the entry itself was wrong; it stays on the page, marked, with the reason, rather than being deleted. WITHDRAWN AND REPLACED — the entry was wrong, and a corrected version of it appears in the entries below. Each mark carries its own reason, in brackets, because the reasons differ from one entry to the next. An entry we have WITHDRAWN is removed from this page and kept in the record, with its reason. A line reading Audit and a date is a later re-reading of the entry against its whole sentence: DOUBTFUL means it was kept, and the reason says what is loose about it. Quotation marks inside the tagger's sentence. Where a tag is the tagger's own sentence, a phrase in quotation marks inside it is borrowed from the paper — the tagger's wording around it is not. The paper's own sentence is the evidence quote for that row; on this page it is withheld with the article, and the article is at its publisher. Nothing inside quotation marks anywhere on this page is ours: if it is quoted, it is the paper's. Whose words a concept carries. A concept entry records a term the paper itself uses, so the term, the sense given for it, and its evidence are the paper's own words, quoted where the paper fixes them. This is the opposite of a sense entry in the tag table, which is the tagger's sentence about how the paper uses a term. Where a concept entry could not be grounded in the paper's words, the entry says so on its own row.

Other fields define these differently the same word, defined another way in another discipline
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Tags on this paper

Every tag the record carries, each linking to every other paper in the corpus that carries it. A tag appears here whether or not its words occur in the article — the spans below are only the ones a sentence in this paper licenses. Of the 5 concept tags on this paper, all 5 are grounded in a quoted sentence. All carry the tagger's gloss of what the term means in this paper, which is not something the article can license.

money priming ambiguity priming effect accessibility system justification Priming works by supplying an interpretation for an ambiguous outcome situation, so the more constrained and unambiguous the outcome, the less room the prime has to shift the response and the smaller the effect Frequent real-world contact with money keeps the concept chronically accessible, so that even subtle cues suffice to activate it and change behaviour Money cues set two opposing forces in motion - one routing from money to free markets to endorsement of the systems supporting them, the other routing from money to personal agency and self-sufficiency, which removes the need to endorse those systems - and the two cancel Money primes act by activating the phenomenological self as an owner of money, which is why primes tying money to the participant personally produce parallel and stronger effects exchange mentality low control independence interdependence feelings of power ambiguity of the outcome situation motivational relevance effect size (Cohen's d) dmoney vs. neutral sample size review

Legend

relation to other work	`claim_relations`	how this paper stands to another: agrees, contradicts, extends, qualifies
claim type	`claim_type`	the shape of the claim: existence, mechanism, method, critique, prediction, null
concept edge	`concept_edges`	an asserted relation between two concepts, with the sentence asserting it
concept	`concepts`	an idea the paper works with, quoted where the paper uses it
content tag	`content_tags`	a finding, definition, quantity, statistic or variable named in the paper
limitation	`limitations`	what the paper says its evidence cannot support
mechanism	`mechanisms`	how the reported effect is said to come about
method	`method`	how the paper produced its evidence
phenomenon	`phenomenon`	the effect or regularity under study
sense	`senses`	a distinct use of a term, quoted where the paper fixes it
transfer	`transfers`	a method or concept carried in from another field

The paper

The full text is not reproduced here. This article is not cleared for redistribution, so the page carries the tag layer only. Its evidence sentences are withheld; the grounding status remains with each tag, and the article itself is at https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000091. The reading view exists for the papers whose licence permits it.

Every tag on this page

claim_relations 2 · claim_type 1 · concept_edges 1 · concepts 5 · content_tags 24 · limitations 3 · mechanisms 4 · method 1 · phenomenon 1 · senses 4 · transfers 1

Relations on this page carry a quotation for the claim. Where a relation was separately evidenced — and so tested against the vocabulary for its type — the row says so; none of 1 relation here carry that mark. The rest are the tagger’s reading of the sentence quoted beside them.

This record holds no controls. A layer is empty when the tagger recorded nothing in it — which is not the same as the paper having nothing to record.

facet	tag	field	conf.	whose words
claim_type	mechanism Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`claim_type`		the paper's words
phenomenon	money priming Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`phenomenon`		the paper's words
method	review Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: review	`method`		the paper's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: Priming works by supplying an interpretation for an ambiguous outcome situation, so the more constrained and unambiguous the outcome, the less room the prime has to shift the response and the smaller the effect	`mechanisms[0]`		the tagger's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: Frequent real-world contact with money keeps the concept chronically accessible, so that even subtle cues suffice to activate it and change behaviour	`mechanisms[1]`		the tagger's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: Money cues set two opposing forces in motion - one routing from money to free markets to endorsement of the systems supporting them, the other routing from money to personal agency and self-sufficiency, which removes the need to endorse those systems - and the two cancel	`mechanisms[2]`		the tagger's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: Money primes act by activating the phenomenological self as an owner of money, which is why primes tying money to the participant personally produce parallel and stronger effects	`mechanisms[3]`		the tagger's words
limitations	The review is explicitly partial: it does not cover the full body of money-priming experiments. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`limitations[0]`		the tagger's words
limitations	The author's own proposed mediator (independence/interdependence) was only weakly supported. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`limitations[1]`		the tagger's words
limitations	The originally hypothesised mechanism, feelings of power, was not supported by the authors' own measurements. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`limitations[2]`		the tagger's words
transfers	the paper claims the subject of money has been left to economists and argues that the psychological side of it explains events economics could not Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`transfers[0]`	0.9	the tagger's words
concepts	money priming Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: money priming	`concepts[0]`	0.95	the paper's words
concepts	ambiguity Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: ambiguity	`concepts[1]`	0.95	the paper's words
concepts	priming effect Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: priming effect	`concepts[2]`	0.95	the paper's words
concepts	accessibility Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: accessibility	`concepts[3]`	0.95	the paper's words
concepts	system justification Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: system justification	`concepts[4]`	0.95	the paper's words
senses	A THEORY OF WHEN PRIMING WORKS AT ALL, OFFERED IN REPLY TO A FAILED REPLICATION. `Variations in a prime's meaning, the ease with which primed content comes to mind, the prime's motivational importance, and the ambiguity of the outcome situation influence the impact of the prime.` Four moderators, stated in the abstract of a paper whose third sentence is that Rohrer, Pashler and Harris failed to replicate. The provenance matters as much as the content: these are conditions named AFTER a null, which is the weakest position from which to name them and also the position in which the field most needs them named Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`senses[0]`	0.95	the tagger's words
senses	AMBIGUITY OF THE OUTCOME IS OFFERED AS THE REASON COGNITIVE PRIMING EFFECTS ARE SMALLER THAN SOCIAL ONES, WHICH INVERTS THE USUAL READING. `Quotation withheld.` The usual account of that same effect-size gap is that social priming effects are inflated. This says they are large because the outcome is loose - a property of the MEASURE, not of the phenomenon - and it makes the gap a prediction rather than an embarrassment. Both readings fit the same numbers, and this corpus holds papers from both sides of the gap Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`senses[1]`	0.95	the tagger's words
senses	AND IT IS FALSIFIABLE, WITH THE TEST SUPPLIED: `Quotation withheld.` The same outcome task was given two NAMES - Kay et al. (2004) called it either a bland `situation` or a `community game` - and `business priming led to more competitive behaviors than neutral primes when the task was blandly called a situation, there was no effect of prime condition when the task was called the community game`. Ambiguity manipulated by renaming, with a null in the constrained arm. That is a much stronger form of the claim than a post-hoc moderator, and it is the paper's best evidence Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`senses[2]`	0.95	the tagger's words
senses	THE PAPER'S OWN SUMMARY OF 165 EXPERIMENTS IS TWO EFFECTS, BOTH STATED AS DIRECTIONS RATHER THAN SIZES: people reminded of money `are less interpersonally attuned. They are not prosocial, caring, or warm. They eschew interdependence.` And they `shift into professional, business, and work mentality. Quotation withheld` A count that large (`165 to date, from 18 countries`) with no pooled effect size is itself a fact about the literature - the defence is breadth of replication rather than magnitude Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`senses[3]`	0.95	the tagger's words
claim_relations	builds-on → Caruso, Vohs, Baxter, and Waytz (2013) Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`claim_relations[0]`		the tagger's words
claim_relations	contradicts → Rohrer, Pashler, and Harris (2015) Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`claim_relations[1]`		the tagger's words
concept_edges	ambiguity —causes→ priming effect Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. direction on the measure: increases · strength of the relation: 0.85 · note: THE DIRECTION IS STATED AS ITS CONTRAPOSITIVE - less room, smaller effect - and the axis quote carries it that way rather than being paraphrased into the positive form. Weight 0.85: the first clause is cited to Higgins & Brendl and Loersch & Payne rather than demonstrated here, and this paper's own status is a reply to a null. The Kay et al. manipulation is the evidence, and it is in the senses. Audit 2026-09-28: DOUBTFUL - read against its full span and kept, but attributed: the span cites Higgins & Brendl and Loersch & Payne for ambiguity determining priming effects. also in: ambiguity · priming effect	`concept_edges[0]`	0.95	the tagger's words
content_tags	effect size (Cohen's d) Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: effect size (Cohen's d)	`content_tags.statistics[0]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	sample size Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. about this quote: THE QUOTE STOPS WHERE THE EXTRACTED TEXT IS INTERRUPTED: after its last word the text runs into the publisher's copyright line - the quote's last word, 'This', is that line's first word ('This document is copyrighted…'), so the words that completed the sentence are not continuous with it and are not quoted. also in: sample size	`content_tags.statistics[1]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	The 165 money-priming experiments from 18 countries point to at least two major effects. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.findings[0]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	People reminded of money are less interpersonally attuned than after neutral primes. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.findings[1]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	People reminded of money work harder on difficult tasks, perform better on objective outcomes, and report feeling efficacious. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.findings[2]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	Feelings of power were tested repeatedly as the explanation for money-priming effects and were not supported: money primes did not change measured power. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.findings[3]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	The independence-interdependence self-construal account fared only marginally better: scores moved in the predicted direction but only weakly. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.findings[4]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	People reminded of new money make more moral decisions and seek fairness, compared with used money or neutral primes. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.findings[5]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	Cash cues heighten sensitivity to costs: more attention to price and less desire to spend. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.findings[6]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	College students, working adults, managers and children as young as 4 show similar effects. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.findings[7]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	Different delivery methods for the money prime - images, physical handling, even play money - yield comparable effects. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.findings[8]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	Withdrawing cash from a machine reduced helpfulness more than walking past a cash dispenser. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. WHOSE RESULT THIS IS: studies in France showed - THE SUBJECT OF THIS RESULT IS AN INDEFINITE STUDY, NOT THIS PAPER. 'Previous studies reported', 'studies in guinea pig showed', 'recent studies have reported' - somebody else's work under a common noun rather than a name, with a citation in the sentence and no first-person marker. The quote is verbatim and the claim is true; only the attribution is wrong. FOUND BY MEASURING MY OWN CUE'S RECALL: the first sweep required a NAMED author as the subject ('Sperling (1960) demonstrated') and found 17. Reading eleven citation-bearing findings on 'Plakke2016' by hand showed four the cue could not see - 'A study examining recognition found', 'studies of typical human subjects have demonstrated', 'A follow up study found' - so the named cue's 17 was a floor and not a count. A CUE'S FALSE POSITIVES TELL YOU NOTHING ABOUT ITS FALSE NEGATIVES, and the only way to find these was to read a record's whole layer.	`content_tags.findings[9]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	The proposed reason the Caruso et al. system-justification result failed to replicate is that money priming induces self-sufficiency, which works against the defensive motive that normally drives system justification. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.findings[10]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	exchange mentality Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: exchange mentality	`content_tags.definitions[0]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	low control Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: low control	`content_tags.definitions[2]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	independence Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: independence	`content_tags.definitions[3]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	interdependence Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: interdependence	`content_tags.definitions[4]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	feelings of power Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: feelings of power	`content_tags.variables[2]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	ambiguity of the outcome situation Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: ambiguity of the outcome situation	`content_tags.variables[4]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	accessibility Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: accessibility	`content_tags.variables[6]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	motivational relevance Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: motivational relevance	`content_tags.variables[7]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	165 — total number of money-priming experiments counted to date, run in 18 countries Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.quantities[0]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	200% — increase in intended donations produced by a credit card prime relative to no prime Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.quantities[1]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	113% — increase in bids in a real binding auction for a credit card prime versus a cash prime Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.quantities[2]`		the tagger's words

Interpretive choices

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