I have seen a lot of nonsense come out of NewScientist recently - most of it surrounding environmental science. Yet this study, which headlined last Friday, took the cake.
Paying taxes feels good, say researchers… Bill Harbaugh at the University of Oregon in Eugene, US, and colleagues gave 19 female university students $100, and told them some of this money would have to go towards taxes.
There are some obvious flaws in the experiment. First, income is not given, it is earned. There have been numerous psychological evaluations demonstrating that people are significantly more generous with money they themselves have been given. I’m sure after winning $10 million in the lottery, it’s not fun to give 35% of that right back to the government - but hey - it’s still $6.5 million right? Have 35% taken from you out of $10 million earned on the market in 25 years of sweat, sacrifice and toil and you might have a bit of a different attitude - and I doubt it would be “pleasure.”
College students also are not exactly a good comparison to full-time working adults. Only half of 4-year college students even hold a job (full or part-time) - but even that seems to just be for “fun money” because over half of all college students pay their tuition with financial aid and three fifths had borrowed money. In other words, we really aren’t looking at much experience in earning money to survive or support a family. We are talking about a group who have a lot of experience in being given money - and the methods of the experiment corroborate that beautifully.
Obviously the study does show that there are psychological benefits to giving, which I wouldn’t argue with at all. But why in the world does this study, performed on only nineteen college girls who are statistically likely to have never even experienced the kind of taxation that is being abstractly referred to in the article, make national headlines in a scientific journal?
Considering I pay taxes to the University of Oregon (and paid them over $20,000 in tuition of my own hard-earned income, no loans, no parents) - that better not have been my $100 going to those kids!
Or maybe college girls are socialists. Did you ever think of that?
“There have been numerous psychological evaluations demonstrating that people are significantly more generous with money they themselves have been given.”
That is an interesting concept from my point of view. I work for an organization where all members–from the CEO to the preschool teacher–are given their income from family and friends. I’ve seen numerous examples of great generosity from these people.
Following on from that, if believers took the attitude that all we have is a gift from God’s hand, we’d probably all be more generous. (You know, “there’s more where that came from.”)
It’s very unusual that they only used girls for the study.
Is the anything more about the study up anywhere? The news article is pretty vague.
It seems they picked up the brain activity when the were reading the tax scenarios, not when they’re handing money over. They were probably happy to see how much of the $100 they’d get to keep.
This tidbit from the article is amusing: “Harbaugh says that people probably like paying taxes more than they admit. He believes the results of his new study help explain the widespread compliance with tax laws.”
No, actually, the widespread compliance with tax laws is because the taxes are withheld from our paychecks. That and the fact that the IRS is has godlike powers to freeze your assets and seize your property. It’s too difficult to skirt the tax man, and the risk is too great.
This was the university I went to folks… please don’t tell my future employers.
In other news, I knew at least 4 people in college that wanted to take over the world. Since I knew less than 200 people well enough to know whether they wanted to take over the world, and there were 1000 traditional students at my school, one can assume there were actually 20 people at the school interested in world conquest. If we take this ratio (1/50 people), it would suggest that a full 6,022,798.94 people in the US would like to take over the world this is more than the estimated 4.3 million people estimated to be homosexual in the US. (link) There are actually more people in the US that want to take over the world than want to have sex with other people of their own gender. Isn’t that scary?
Atanamis: submit that to newscientist! That’s national news material!
So…does this mean I’m gay?