Money is such a familiar feature of human life that we take its existence and power for granted. All countries in the world today use money, so culturally it is nearly universal by now.
Looked at from the perspective of nature, however, money is quite unusual. No species of plant or animal (other than humans) uses money. Money is thus a product of human culture, but it is estimated to be only about 3,000 years old (Davies, 2002), which means that early civilizations did not have it. It is much too recent to have shaped human nature biologically. There is no “money instinct.”
Clearly people want money, and many people work long and hard to get it. Attempting to explain this in biological terms, Lea and Webley (2005) started with the analogy of a tool. Just as animals ure tools to get what they want, people use money to get what they want. Biology has programmed humans (like other animals) to want things, so people also come to want money because it enables them to get these things. This part of the theory seems straightforward. Like any tool, money is desired not for itself but for what can be done with it.
But this analogy failed to explain the widespread human concern with money, as Lea and Webley soon recognized. For example, some people hoard money, obviously wanting to get it and keep it but not spend it. What good is a tool you never use?
So Lea and Webley produced a second analogy: Money is not just like a tool; it is also like a drug. People come to want it for its own sake, even though it does not confer any benefi t that biology recognizes.
Drugs take advantage of the body’s natural capacities for pleasure. People feel happy when they do something that will ultimately lead to survival or reproduction, such as when they have sex or fall in love or fi nd something great to eat. Drugs in a sense trick the body, because when you take a drug, you might feel as good as if you had fallen in love, but whereas being in love might help you achieve survival and reproduction, being high on drugs will not normally accomplish either of these. In the same way, money comes to be desired for its own sake, rather than for the sake of the good things one gets for it. That’s why people might hoard money, for example. It is as if they are addicted to money.
Although animals never develop money on their own, some of them seem capable of learning aspects of money, if humans teach them. Levitt and Dubner (2005) reported on studies done by Keith Chen with monkeys. After several months of training, the monkeys learned to trade little coins for treats such as grapes. When the researchers changed the price, the monkeys adjusted their purchases accordingly. There wasn’t much sign of monkeys’ using money with each other, except for one enterprising male who managed to trade a coin for sex with a female (who then spent the coin on getting a grape, her favorite treat). Still, their grasp of money remained rudimentary, and the researchers reported that they sometimes tried to use cucumber slices as if they were coins, at least when trading with humans (who did not fall for the counterfeit).
