According to new research, life from paycheck to paycheck reduces a person’s mental abilities. For four years, scientists have investigated how unemployment and a difficult financial situation affect the cognitive abilities of people. The results of the work, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, indicate that prolonged existence in conditions of financial instability leads to a noticeable drop in IQ.
In the course of observing the experiment participants, scientists established that difficult living conditions lead to the formation of the so-called poverty mentality in humans. The constant need to seek livelihood dulls the creative and analytical skills, and also increases the frequency of erroneous and unwise decisions.
“Poverty robs a person of 13–14 IQ points. A similar effect is observed with a serious lack of sleep and alcoholism. Try to stand in the place of the poor man. Day after day, you spend enormous energy on satisfying the simplest needs. You live in constant stress, you become inattentive and irritable. These are not the best conditions for the brain to work, ”said Eldar Shafir, a psychologist from Princeton who took part in the work.
Poverty makes a person more stupid, which means that his chances of breaking out of difficult conditions fall even more. A person risks permanently stuck inside this vicious circle.
How to help those who were on the sidelines of life? Some economists believe that the situation can be improved by introducing unconditional income. In a number of countries (Canada, Finland) the experiment on the introduction of a database has already begun.
Based on BigThink
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