Some Consequences of Having Too Little

Abstract

Poor individuals often engage in behaviors, such as excessive borrowing, that reinforce the conditions of poverty. Some explanations for these behaviors focus on personality traits of the poor. Others emphasize environmental factors such as housing or financial access. We instead consider how certain behaviors stem simply from having less. We suggest that scarcity changes how people allocate attention: It leads them to engage more deeply in some problems while neglecting others. Across several experiments, we show that scarcity leads to attentional shifts that can help to explain behaviors such as overborrowing. We discuss how this mechanism might also explain other puzzles of poverty.

Etudier, Mesurer et Manipuler la Classe Sociale en Psychologie Sociale: Approches Economiques, Symboliques et Culturelles [Studying, Measuring and Manipulating Social Class in Social Psychology: Economic, Symbolic and Cultural Approaches]

“…Cette démarche consiste à manipuler directement le médiateur qui est supposé jouer un rôle dans un phénomène observé. Plusieurs études ont eu recours à cette méthode (voir Tableau 1) afin d'établir le rôle causal de la rareté des ressources (Shah, Mullainathan, & Shafir, 2012), du rang perçu Piff et al, 2010), du pouvoir (Dubois et al, 2015) ou encore du capital culturel (Goudeau & Croizet, sous presse).…”

“…Les conséquences positives et négatives de la rareté des ressources ont été mises en évidence dans une étude où l'expérience de la rareté a été recréée expérimentalement (Shah et al, 2012). La disponinilité des ressources a été manipulée en allouant plus ou moins de projectiles à des particiants dans une tâche de tir balistique présentée dans un jeu vidéo (i.e., les participants devaient projeter des myrtilles sur des gaufres).…”

Towards a multidimensional poverty index for Germany

“…Tunneling, a drawback of focusing, however, is found to induce myopia, a phenomenon also well documented by behavioral economics. 15 See also Shah et al (2012), Mani et al (2013) Who is poor? Many instances of the subsequent empirical analysis use a poverty cutoff k = 40, implying an individual is considered poor if she suffers at least 40% of the (weighted) maximal possible deprivation.…”

The 2008 Economic Stimulus Payments Increased Emotional Well-Being

“…In fact, a link between liquidity constraints and emotional distress may explain why low-income people sometimes make poor financial decisions (Shah, Mullainathan, and Shafir 2012). Support for this is also echoed in other psychological research.…”