So if you think about money, you enjoy chocolate less and you eat it faster, or at least so the second study mentioned says. An alternative theory: people, whe

So if you think about money, you enjoy chocolate less and you eat it faster, or at least so the second study mentioned says. An alternative theory: people, when confronted with money, realize that they will not be able to enjoy more chocolate, due to the cost, and therefor rate it as being less enjoyable as a defense mechanism, to avoid the fact that they want more. They also eat it faster because they're worried that the researchers will make them pay for it. On a slightly more logical note ... all this shows is that thinking about money reduces enjoyment of things. Presumably, richer people are able to get things without thinking about the cost, and hence money. It would be interesting to do the same study on the rich and privileged, and see both if their average enjoyment of chocolate is lower, and if it gets even lower when they're thinking about money. Until that's done, it seems a bit extreme to say that this proves anything (except, perhaps, that worrying about money reduces enjoyment of chocolate, but I don't know if any of the subjects considered themselves rich, and how their results differed, if at all, so I can't even conclude that).