Humans are social animals with disproportionately large brains that seem especially apt at figuring out social constellations; we like soap operas and reality TV.
Humans are also cultural animals, in the sense that we rely on each other and our cultural achievements for survival. And even if this doesn't mean that we necessarily like other humans, it does suggest that we are quite anxious about being liked ourselves; after all, few things cause as much psychic dread with us as does social ostracism...unless, that is, you have lots of money.
Or so an excellent study from Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China, and the University of Minnesota suggests:
As evolutionary psychologists might argue, social interdependency among humans,
"sustains a strong need to belong, because gaining acceptance by the group is important for obtaining the means of survival".
Economists, however, will quickly point out that
"in all but the most primitive cultures, money can substitute for social popularity: Money enables people to manipulate the social system to give them what they want, regardless of whether they are liked."
Hence, there exist two ways that people can navigate the society, by being liked, or by being wealthy. Which is exactly why Kathleen Vohs, who received her PhD in Psychology and Brain Sciences from Dartmouth, but is now a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, and her colleagues Xinyue Zhou and Roy Baumeister developed the hypothesis that reminders of money might be able to alter the impact of how people perceive social events of acceptance or rejection. In particular, they reasoned, that even the mere thought of money should influence how much we are bothered by rejection, or care for social acceptance.
The experiments designed to test this hypothesis are particularly exciting, in that they make usage of a peculiar link that a number of other researchers, but also Baumeister - a highly distinguished social psychologist who lists as an enduring theme of his research the investigation of "why people do stupid things" - had shown in earlier work on psychic pain from social exclusion. In particular, these earlier studies had established that a multitude of the bodily responses to social exclusion are in many ways identical to those caused by physical injury. In this sense, psychic pain from social ostracism is indeed "pain", as for example
"social rejection (ostracism) produces brain responses that resemble responses to physical pain",
and - as Baumeister showed in 2006 - rejection produces the same temporary numbness to physical pain that usually follows bodily injury.
Having found this, Zouh, Baumeister, and Vohs then figured that
"as money may be linked with social pain, it may be linked with physical pain, because social and physical pain rely on similar mechanisms.",
And thus came up with these specific hypotheses for their line of experiments:
- "Pain should increase the desire for money."
- "Thoughts of having money should reduce feelings of pain caused by an external stimulus", and
- "Thoughts of spending or losing money should intensify pain."
To test the second of the above claims experimentally, one of the studies the researchers ran had participants count several stacks of money, and then allowed a research assistant to immerse the participant's index and middle fingers into hot water for a few seconds. Participant's then completed a number of pain and mood measures, before being debriefed and released into a world where they may never participate in psychological research experiments ever again.
Another group of participants' went through the same procedure, but counted stacks of blank paper instead of the cash. What the researchers found in both instances was a striking difference between participant's pain ratings and whether or not they had been made to count money before hand.
As the graph indicates, at a high temperature of 50 degrees Celsius (122 F), physical pain was perceived as much less, when subjects previously counted money. Or as Vohs and her colleagues put it
"counting money, which presumably evoked the idea of getting and having money, reduced the suffering induced by [...] real physical pain."
With the other experiments, which appeared in the journal Psychological Science, the author find the same to be true for the suffering induced by psychic pain.
They also showed that
"both social rejection and thoughts of physical pain led to increased desire for money."
And that
"remembering having spent money [makes people] more vulnerable to distress in response to social exclusion and physical pain."
Which, of course, is the precise reason why dolphins decided to live without money...
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Main Reference:
Zhou, Xinyue. (2009-06) The Symbolic Power of Money: Reminders of Money Alter Social Distress and Physical Pain. Psychological Science, 18(6), 795-706. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02353.x 
