Money, money, money... An article by Mark Buchanan in New Scientist looks at attitudes to the stuff and at research on these attitudes, and finds it strange that money should be associated with hang-ups and obsessions, with 'passion, stress and envy'. Buchanan says:
Simply thinking about words associated with money seems to [make] us more self-reliant and less inclined to help others. And it gets weirder: just handling cash can take the sting out of social rejection and even diminish physical pain.
This is all the stranger when you consider what money is supposed to be. For economists, it is nothing more than a tool of exchange that makes economic life more efficient.
He goes on to add that 'some people's brains can react to [money] as they would to a drug' and that we 'just can't seem to deal with it rationally', and to ask why. Whether these are just rhetorical devices to get his readers interested or he really does approach the issue with beliefs that generate puzzlement, I'd say Buchanan was missing something. Money may be a tool of exchange making economic life more efficient, but it isn't nothing more than this. It's also a source of opportunity and power, and there's a tradition of writing about money as being that and as magically taking into itself the power which it gives its owner. This is implicit in its being a tool of exchange. And it's explicit in some of what is said by the researchers Buchanan himself quotes. So it's not so strange, after all, 'why some people appear to go crazy over money'. First, there's a rational core to wanting money; it can do things for you that you otherwise couldn't do. Second, people aren't entirely rational, and power is one of the things well known to turn their heads. Third, human beings have all sorts of weird obsessions. It's not that odd, therefore, if these sometimes fix on something so useful, on... money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money. (Yes, there's possibly more understanding of the phenomenon under that last link than there is in the featured article.)