Previous research on money and prosociality has described a monotonic pattern, showing that money reduces generosity. The present research aimed to examine whether money differently impairs generosity when arising from altruistic versus egoistic motives. To this end, we employed economic games designed to study generosity (e.g., the Dictator game) and varied experimental currency (i.e., money vs. candy/food). The results (N = 850) showed that although money made people ignore others when others were not crucial for their future gain, generosity was not impacted when egoistic motives (Study 1: avoiding sanctions; Studies 2 and 3: building reputation) were present. In other words, although people in general showed flexible prosociality by adjusting their generosity level according to game type, this was much more strongly the case when money rather than candy/food was the currency. In addition, we demonstrate a boundary condition of money on flexible generosity, namely imbuing money with prosocial meaning (Study 3). Some implications are discussed.

中文翻译：

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金钱和灵活的慷慨

先前关于金钱和亲社会性的研究描述了一种单调的模式，表明金钱会减少慷慨。本研究旨在检验金钱在出于利他动机和利己动机时是否会以不同的方式损害慷慨。为此，我们采用了旨在研究慷慨的经济游戏（例如独裁者游戏）和各种实验性货币（即金钱与糖果/食物）。结果 ( N = 850) 表明，虽然当其他人对他们未来的收益不重要时，金钱会让人们忽视他人，但当利己动机（研究 1：避免制裁；研究 2 和 3：建立声誉）存在时，慷慨并没有受到影响。换句话说，虽然人们通常通过根据游戏类型调整他们的慷慨程度来表现出灵活的亲社会性，但当金钱而不是糖果/食物是货币时，这种情况更加强烈。此外，我们展示了灵活慷慨的货币边界条件，即赋予货币亲社会意义（研究 3）。讨论了一些影响。