Dear Dr. Qwerty,
The Online Commentary Proposal System is currently unavailable due to
technical difficulties. Until the system is reactivated, please follow the
instructions in this email.
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Below the proposal instructions please find the abstract, keywords, and
a link to the full text of the forthcoming BBS target article:
"Money as tool, money as drug: The biological
psychology of a strong incentive"
Stephen E. G. Lea and Paul Webley
FULL TEXT:
http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Lea/Referees/
This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain
Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing
Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in
the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences.
Commentators must be BBS Associates or suggested by a BBS Associate. To
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*** COMMENTARY PROPOSAL INSTRUCTIONS ***
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To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, it would be
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Please reply by EMAIL to calls(a)bbsonline.org by July 19, 2005.
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TARGET ARTICLE INFORMATION
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TARGET ARTICLE: Money as tool, money as drug: The biological psychology
of a strong incentive
AUTHORS: Stephen E. G. Lea and Paul Webley
ABSTRACT: Why are people interested in money? Specifically, what could
be the biological basis for the extraordinary incentive and reinforcing
power of money, which seems to be unique to the human species? We
identify two ways in which a commodity which is of no biological
significance in itself can become a strong motivator. The first is if
it is used as a tool, and by a metaphorical extension this is often
applied to money: it is used instrumentally, in order to obtain
biologically relevant incentives. However substances can be strong
motivators because they imitate the action of natural incentives but do
not produce the fitness gains for which those incentives are
instinctively sought. The classic examples of this process are
psychoactive drugs, but we argue that the drug concept can also be
extended metaphorically to provide an account of money motivation. From
a review of theoretical and empirical literature about money, we
conclude (i) that there are a number of phenomena that cannot be
accounted for by a pure Tool Theory of money motivation; (ii) that
supplementing it with a Drug Theory enables the anomalous phenomena to
be explained; and (iii) that the human instincts that, according to a
Drug Theory, money parasitizes include trading (derived from reciprocal
altruism) and object play.
KEYWORDS: Economic behaviour; evolutionary psychology; giving;
incentive; money; motivation; play; reciprocal altruism
FULL TEXT:
http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Lea/Referees/
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SUPPLEMENTARY ANNOUNCEMENT
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(1) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review
In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) had only been able
to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because of our
limited annual page quota. BBS's new expanded page quota will make
it possible for us to increase the number of books we treat per
year, so this is an excellent time for BBS Associates and
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would like to see accorded BBS multiple book review.
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indicated in what way a BBS Multiple Book Review of the book(s) you
nominate would be useful to the field (and of course a rich list of
potential reviewers would be the best evidence of its potential
impact!).
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Barbara Finlay - Editor
Paul Bloom - Editor
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
bbs(a)bbsonline.org
http://www.bbsonline.org
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