The psychological meaning of money and Machiavellianism

The aim of this paper was to verify the relation between psychological meaning of money and Machiavellianism. According to recent research, money bolsters self-focus and focus on own goals, motivates to keep resources that are inevitable to reach those goals, and changes the perception of social world from community mode to market-pricing mode, and these phenomena are in turn related to Machiavellianism. However, previous studies in this area examined only the correlations between money attitudes and Machiavellianism. These results have been replicated in the first study presented in this paper: Machiavellianism was related to the belief in the symbolic nature of money, but not to the instrumental focus on money management. Second study showed that the money primes results in higher scores on the MACH-IV scale when compared to control condition, and this effect is stronger among participants who attribute emotional connotations to money. peerReviewed publishedVersion