A University of Minnesota professor is arguing that the touch and thought of cash helps solve your woes. Money may not be able to buy happiness, but it helps take the pain away, he says he’s found.
In a series of experiments, people who counted money felt less pain when their hands were dipped into scalding water. The soothing power of cash also helped them shrug off the emotional pain of social exclusion.
The findings might offer an easy way to ease life’s stings and hurts, from painful medical treatments to social ostracism: Simply flip through a bulging wallet before enduring a painful experience.
“When people are reminded of money in a subtle manner by counting out hard currency, they experience painful situations as being not very painful,” said lead author Kathleen Vohs, a consumer psychologist at the University of Minnesota’s Carleton School of Management in the Twin Cities.
Does rubbing cash over your own wounds make it feel better like mommy’s kiss does? I mean, used to? Right, used to.