Responses to Actual, Perceived and Imagined Scarcities

Jai B. P. Sinha

Psychology and Developing Societies, 2022, vol. 34, issue 1, 7-24

Abstract: Making more money is the most dominant response to cope with actual, perceived or imagined scarcities. For the poor, it is a means to survive in extremely adverse conditions and to struggle to cross over the poverty line into the lower middle class; for the affluent middle class, it is a way to catch up with and overtake friends, relatives and neighbours by being able to have more expensive possessions and exciting experiences; and for the super-rich, it is a show of arrogance and a response to the imagined sense of still not having enough for an endless chase of unbridled ambitions. Money is a leading physical resource for building human resources by widening access to good education, adequate health care and sustainable livelihood as well as showing off one’s superiority. It has a curvilinear relationship with social resources where having too much or too little money erodes social sensitivity and bonding. The article makes a number of conjectures to stimulate research in future.

Keywords: Adaptive preference; classes of Indians; duplicity in mindset; human resources; income inequality; need for achievement; social resources (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:psydev:v:34:y:2022:i:1:p:7-24

DOI: 10.1177/09713336221080626

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