Experiments led by Emory psychologist Arber Tasimi found that children prefer non-stolen money offered by a "bad" person over stolen money offered by an "okay" person. "This sensitivity to morality, even in the context of money, seems to emerge early,” Tasimi says.
Experiments show that children prefer non-stolen money from a “bad” person over stolen money from an “okay” person, researchers report.
When people deposit a $100 bill into their bank accounts, they don’t imagine that when they later withdraw $100 they will get the same bill. After all, the only thing that matters about money is its amount. A dollar is just like any other dollar unless it comes with a tainted past.
“People tend to imbue objects with essences,” says Arber Tasimi, assistant professor of psychology at Emory University. “We can be put off by objects that we know have a ‘bad’ essence because of an immoral history, like a sweater worn by Hitler. And money doesn’t appear to be an exception.”
Using the generic “you” can help make ideas resonate, research on what readers highlight indicates.
Writers often use the word “you” generically to make an idea seem more universal, even though it might not be.
A paper on the linguistic device appears in the
Previously, researchers have found that heightened resonance can result from altering a message’s content, either to evoke emotion, highlight its applicability to a person’s life, or appeal to a person’s beliefs. While reading a novel on her Kindle, University of Michigan professor of psychology and linguistics Susan Gelman began to notice many of the passages that other readers had spontaneously highlighted used generic-you, and wondered if this was coincidence or representative of a systematic pattern.