Kids Who Handle Money Work Harder, but There’s a Downside

Fortune:

Money can make youngsters as little as three years old work harder, but there’s evidence it can also make them less charitable.

Money makes the world go round. Even when you’re three years old. That’s the finding of a new international study, which found that children work harder around money, even before they understand how it works.

The youngsters are activating something called “market mode”—a primal force that not only fosters persistence, but also makes them less charitable and less helpful.

“It still blows my mind” says psychologist Kathleen Vohs, a marketing professor at the University of Minnesota, who co-authored the soon-to-be-published Psychological Science study with both American and Polish colleagues. In the study, one group of kids was asked to sort buttons before working on a challenging puzzle, while others sorted money and then gave the puzzle a try.

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