Had Another Argument Over Monopoly This Christmas? Here’s Why:

If you’re like my family, Monopoly is a staple board game at Christmas. If you’re even more like my family, it’s not uncommon for there to be an argument along the way. Typically, these arguments will regard
one or two players being lucky, one player acting arrogantly or the rules of the game itself being unfair.

Sound familiar? Well, Professor Paul Piff, a social psychologist, has illustrated that the way people in which people behave during a game of monopoly varies depending on how wealthy a player is.

Assessing over 150 games of rigged Monopoly (one player starting off with double the money of their opponent), Piff shows that as the game unfolds, the richer player began to behave differently. They became more likely to boast about how well they were doing, they became more likely to order a less wealthy player around, less likely to smile, less likely to make eye contact, more likely to more around the board in a louder fashion. Crucially, at the end of the game, the wealthy players explained their success, and the failure of their opponents solely on their strategy, not on the advantage they were handed as part of the experiment.  

Whilst in behavioural sciences and psychology these ideas and findings aren’t particularly ground-breaking, what is useful is how this behaviour relates to our every-day lives.

Through the practicality of handing, bartering and paying money, within a game of Monopoly, we can begin to visualise how disconnected many of us are from the financial processes which can impact both our own outcomes and the outcomes of others. Through this, we can also begin to understand how different amounts of money can influence our own behaviour and perceptions of those around us. Likewise, we can unpack how individuals may rationalise and explain monetary differences between groups in our society.  

So the next time you play Monopoly take a closer look at how you, your friends and family change their behaviour depending on how financially healthy they are; a simple game of Monopoly in this way serves as a microcosm for how society interacts and often explains differences in money at a broader scale.