Why do some people become misers and others gamblers, spendthrifts and tycoons, and why do some people gain more pleasure from giving away money than from retaining it? Comprehensive and cross-cultural, The Psychology of Money integrates fascinating and scattered literature from many disciplines to investigate the influence of money on our behavior and psyches. Including the most recent material to date, the authors draw from sources as diverse as anthropology, history and psychology. The reader will come away not only with a better understanding of how and why people think about, feel toward, accumulate and spend money, but why its discussion has so often been considered "taboo."