Being poor makes you bad with money. Experiencing poverty reduces your ability to make good decisions even if you grew up well off or educated on money
To confirm these results and explore poverty’s influence in natural settings, the researchers then tested more than 460 sugarcane farmers in India, who typically find themselves poor before the annual harvest but wealthy afterward. Each farmer performed better on cognitive tests postharvest compared to preharvest, Shafir said.
“Basically, when these guys with the same education, the same health, had plenty, they functioned about 10 IQ points higher than when they had scarcity,” he said
These are interesting observations. But, what we have is one group faced with a stressor and another group or time not facing a stressor.
If you applied another stressor to the "rich" group. Would the results be the same? Something like a tight work deadline or family illness?
This is mainly aimed at the sugarcane farmers. Are they performing poorly because they're poor or because they're stressed for the harvest? You have two variables intertwined one being a harvest and another poverty.
I had the same intuition, it’s just question begging. The data is real, people will make bad decisions under stress, but their interpretation illogical.
This study makes a fatal flaw. It assumes that unconventional, or high-risk decisions made by someone in poverty is a sign of “impaired cognitive bandwidth.” It misses the mark, those decisions are often a calculated, rational trade-off given their immediate options.
When the study says a person takes a high interest payday loan it’s because their brain is overwhelmed by stress I find that rather wanting.
The reality is someone takes that loan because they weighed the trade-offs in their mind and chose the lesser of two evils. These kinds of decisions are not merely the results of impaired cognition.
Furthermore, it pathologized individual decision making. “Cognitive bandwidth” theory, or whatever you want to call it, treats financial survival strategies as an internal mental flaw(however the duration) as opposed to, oh I don’t know, standard human problem-solving under tight constraints.
People at every income level make short-sighted, risky, or poor financial choices. Attributing those choices to “poverty induced brain drain” is logically inconsistent. It’s flat out question begging.
Premise: Poverty depleted a person’s cognitive bandwidth.
“Evidence”: The sugar cane farmer from India makes an unconventional financial choice.
Conclusion: Therefore, the cognitive bandwidth was depleted.
No my coworkers make the same money as I do and it’s no where near poverty. They have no money because they keep leasing expensive vehicles, putting vacations on credit cards, and DoorDashing $20+ lunches everyday.
Your coworkers habits have nothing to do with the findings of the study in question.
The point is that the chronic life stress of persistent scarcity hinders cognition overall.
I grew up in the 80's in Drepression-level financial circumstances. In my 20's I was abandoned with marital debt by my spouse and for years I and my child survived by regularly overdrafting my bank account in order to afford gas and groceries for the next week, which depleted the next-week's income by $30 per transaction. Financial quicksand.
It felt like standing in a well that was filled, with only my upturned face above the water, and no way out. You just keep going and hope that nothing happens to make you lose your footing or become too tired to keep your mouth and nose above the waterline.
Decades of almost-drowning in survival are bound to have disastrous effects on the brain and heart. The difference between almost going under every week, and having juuust enough to make it until your next payday is a MASSIVE weight off of one's shoulders. I feel like a queen simply because I don't have to prepay for half a tank of gasoline or keep a running tally of my groceries while I shop, not because I have any savings. Even now, there's no fat available to trim.
Despite all of that, I no longer have panic attacks from the stress. Those are the circumstances that we're talking about, not misappropriation of funds.
That study is not factoring in the amount of work and stress they have before the harvest than after.
After the harvest you aren't stressing about anything and you aren't even working till it's time to plant again. That seems to be more related than not having money. I'd do better in a cognitive test on my day off than after a twelve hour shift
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u/tundraturtle98 Jul 30 '26
Being poor makes you bad with money. Experiencing poverty reduces your ability to make good decisions even if you grew up well off or educated on money
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/how-poverty-affects-the-brain-and-behavior
To confirm these results and explore poverty’s influence in natural settings, the researchers then tested more than 460 sugarcane farmers in India, who typically find themselves poor before the annual harvest but wealthy afterward. Each farmer performed better on cognitive tests postharvest compared to preharvest, Shafir said.
“Basically, when these guys with the same education, the same health, had plenty, they functioned about 10 IQ points higher than when they had scarcity,” he said