Logan

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Annotated Bibliography

Does the amount of money one makes affect their emotional stability?

Logan Hughes
Professor Malcolm Campbell
UWRT-1103
March 11, 2015

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Annotated Bibliography
Levin, David, and Jennifer Lerner. "The Deciding Factor." NOVA. N.p., 01 Mar. 2010.
Web. 07 Mar. 2015.
This piece is a podcast interview between David Levin and Jennifer Lerner on how
emotions affect the way people spends their money. Jennifer Lerner is a social
psychologist at Harvard University and studies how emotions effect our financial
decisions, which is a little different perspective than my initial argument stating that
money affects our emotional standpoint. In her interview she states that peoples money
spending habits are directly correlated by what emotion or time in their life they are
going through. She goes on to say that the traditional economic theory says that people
think rationally when making decisions, however when it comes to making money
decisions this is very rarely the case. When people are sad or depressed they tend to lash
out by making poor decisions and spending money they dont necessarily have in order to
make them feel better. Looking at this interview I immediately noticed that Jennifer
Lerner is a credible source because she is a social psychologist at Harvard and really
focuses hard on my topic of interest. The biggest thing about her point of view is that it is
completely opposite of how I feel on the subject. When picking my own brain I always
believe that peoples money situation affect how depressed they are or how happy they
are, but when researching through her thoughts she believes that our current emotional
standpoint affects how we spend money. I believe this would help my paper out
tremendously because it is important for the reader to see some form of a contrasting
argument in a paper that may seem to be very one sided. Overall I believe this article will

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make the paper better as a whole and really challenge me as a writer to really dive deep in
research and even makes me have a different point of view on my own subject.

"Money And Emotional Reactions." Duke Personal Assistance Service. Duke University,
n.d. Web. 07 Mar. 2015
In this article presented by Duke University, it explains how money does increase
emotional stress in most Americans. Throughout the piece it backs up its points by using
various different statistical models including a national survey. Looking at the survey it
can be shown that most people are emotional challenged and stressed because of their
financial situation. It also explains how these worries can start to effect relationships,
such as marriage, and ways for people to help another that is in a depressed emotional
state. It also explains how children are able to cope with these different stresses better
than adults if the parents react to the financial changes in a somewhat positive way. As
someone looking at the article the big points I really thought to be helpful were the
survey results and its descriptive information on how money does affect a persons life
and ways for people to help others in need. It is somewhat more of a medical document
rather than an opinionated article and this is good because it has a lot of facts and
information that has been thoroughly researched. I feel that it is a very good resource to
use in the enquiry project because of the reasons already listed. In order to sway peoples
opinions it is important have some form of facts and research listed that is reliable
because facts are extremely hard to argue. Duke University is also a very highly thought
of academic institution and is proven to be a reliable source if information to turn to.

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Herring, Angela. "'Happinomics': The Science of Money and Emotion." News
Northeastern. Northeastern University, 14 May 2012. Web. 06 Mar. 2015.
In this newspaper article by Northeastern University, it explains how America isnt as
worried about happiness but rather our overall GDP. In the article three separate
individuals explained their views on happiness and how worrying about money effects
that happiness, Michael Norton from Harvard Business School, Robert Frank who is an
economic professor at Cornell University, and psychology professor Daniel Gilbert from
Harvard. Throughout the article all of the professors agree that money as a whole brings
some form of emotional stress to individuals lives. Even when people have a ton of
money they can still be shown to have stress when it comes to their money situation and
people that give away their money instead of spending it on their selves tend to show
happier results in various research and statistical models. This is shown through our
nations GDP as a whole. Even though the United States has one of the highest national
GDPs in the entire world, we are not even close to being ranked the happiest country in
the world. The article goes on to say that people are more worried about making money
rather than doing something that is going to make them happy. They are basically saying
that our focus is on the wrong thing, we shouldnt be worrying about the amount of
money we make but instead what we do with the money we have and our overall all
health and lifestyle decisions. Reading this article really allowed me to get a better
understanding from some highly qualified people on how emotions and money works.
Their point of view is pretty closely related to my thoughts and opinions on my topic.
People sometimes get lost in money and this can be extremely dangerous on an emotional
standpoint. This is why America isnt ranked highly on happiness but ranked highly in

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overall GDP. This article helps my paper because it provides a stance on my side of the
argument that is extremely helpful for readers to understand. It also shows how
happiness is directly correlated with money instead of looking at it from a depression
standpoint, which is different compared to most other articles.

Carpenter, Stephanie, Ellen Peters, Daniel Vstfjll, and Alice Isen. "Positive Feelings
Facilitate Processing." Cognition & Emotion (n.d.): n. pag. Psychology Press.
Psychology Press. Web. 06 Mar. 2015.
This peer reviewed journal entry explains how the body reacts to punishment and rewards
on a biological level. When humans have positive emotions dopamine is released into
their system, which improves decision-making and memory. This can be related to
money because usually when an individual is reward by gaining some form of money
they tend to become happier which helps improve things like decision-making. The
opposite can be said of people who are depressed from the punishment that a significant
loss of money can bring. When people lose money they tend to lash out and make poor
decisions that start to affect their emotional state. When one starts making a series of bad
decisions they may fall into depression and have serious anxiety. Even though this article
is not completely related to how money directly affects emotion it does give a vast
amount of information on how the human body works when affected by certain
situations. Money being such a significant part of every humans life it is hard not to find
a direct connection between the research in this journal and money. A lot of decisions
that people make are related to money and how to manage their money in their current
situation. I feel that this is a very strong piece for the paper not only because it covers the

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peer review portion of my research but also because it is one of the only pieces that show
how certain rewards and punishments biologically affect the body and its hormones.