This fascinating book illustrates how human behavior regarding money is triggered by emotion and powered by our psychic makeup, empowering readers to better understand their own behavior and decision making with money.

Beyond being an essential medium of exchange, money carries deep psychological significance: having enough of it confers power and status and provides the potential to sustain our lifestyle and fulfill our desires. Not having money triggers a breadth of negative emotions. This book explores the psychological payload money carries and the emotional effects it generates, allowing readers to better understand people's behavior with money and its effects on their own lives.

The Emotional Life of Money: How Money Changes the Way We Think and Feel identifies common hang-ups and anxieties about money; summarizes current academic research on money behavior and how people make decisions about their money; discusses the newest branch of economics, behavioral economics; and explores the possibility of the disappearance of cash in the digital future. General readers will be able to comprehend why money has often generated intense feelings of desire, greed, envy, elation, and other emotions, as well as sense of status; and undergraduate students in psychology, economics, and sociology courses will benefit from learning about the latest research on behavior economics and the powerful psychological and emotional effects of money.

Mary Cross, PhD, is professor emerita at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NJ, where she was chair of the English Department.