Nature or nurture?

Essentially, three broad areas influence a man's attitude towards money – nature, circumstances and parents.

Delhi-based psychoanalyst Sanjay Chugh talks to Friday about how these three influences shape people into skinflints, spendthrifts or something in between or outside of them.

Influence 1: nature

Many aspects of our personality are predetermined. Is a person's tendency to be generous or a skinflint also predetermined?

When we talk of any human pattern – whether it is emotions, thoughts, behaviour, relationships, attitude or perspective – everything conforms to a bio-psycho social model.

Bio is the biological aspect of these patterns. Psycho the psychological or the personality link pattern and social environment – the external environment a child grows up in and the developmental influences [on him] when he becomes an adolescent and an adult.

Everything that a person is at any stage of life is a reflection of his bio-psycho social means. There is no getting away from it.

That means there is a greater predisposition to be a particular kind of a person. There is a genetic predisposition to think and behave in a particular way.

But when the child is growing up and sees his father or mother or an elder relative or sibling behaving in another way – that becomes the environmental influence. Eventually, it's the interplay between the internal and the external environment that determines how a person is going to be at a certain point in time.

Is being generous or non-generous genetically predetermined? I would not say it is … but there is a certain predisposition that you inherit.

For a child, the biggest role models are his parents and then his extended family.

Later, his friends influence him followed by the teacher/s' influence in school. But parents have the biggest impact on a child's mind. If they are generous, throw lavish parties, go on long vacations, are always buying gifts for the child … there is every probability that he will do the same with his own children one day.

But if the child's circumstances are such where he sees his parents are tight-fisted (maybe they have absolutely valid reasons to be) and they tell him it is OK to make one pair of shoes last five years, it is called ‘learnt behaviour', where the child is conditioned and learns that it is an acceptable way of being.

Is it possible for a person to be born into a wealthy family and still turn into a skinflint?

Absolutely. Wealth has nothing to do with being generous. A man can be wealthy because his grandfather and father were miserly with their money and he inherited a lot of wealth because of their behavioural pattern.

He will want that his children and grandchildren should also enjoy the luxuries, so he continues to be tight-fisted. But there can also be people who are very rich and realise that they have much more money than they would need in their life, so they decide to spread some happiness and joy by lending that money to friends.

Here, I would like to say that a miser is not a good person to live with, although it's nice to have a miser as an ancestor! For a child who has a miser as a parent, I am sure, it can be extremely painful.

There are many cases of poor or modestly-off people who are very generous.

Yes, there are people who are born into a poor family, but work hard and make money, or strike it rich in the stock market or real estate and suddenly find themselves with a lot of spare money.

These are the kind who are often grateful for the money they have and remember the times when they were not as well-off as they are today. They can be typically very generous, to the point of being reckless and foolish with their money. They tend to lend money very easily but find it very difficult to ask for it back!

To what extent does nature determine whether we turn out to be generous or selfish (hoarder)?

There is essentially a mix of nature and nurture. Nature is what you are born with – the predisposition, the role model, which I mentioned earlier, that plays a very major role. It applies to how you are going to deal with money.

Then comes nurture. Here's an example: when a child is studying in a classroom, a teacher writes on the blackboard. After class is over, the next teacher comes.

She wipes the blackboard and writes something else. No one is able to decipher what the earlier teacher had written.

When a child is born, he has a similar blackboard in his mind. When he starts growing up, people around him start writing on it.

These are never erased. It is a script that will always determine a person's emotional or behavioural patterns at every stage of his life. So a child who is exhibiting miserly or hoarding tendencies is reflecting the script that was written. That is the effect of nurture rather than nature.

If one looks at different personality traits, nowhere is this more manifest than in the compulsive need to hoard money.

Here, circumstances are a person's nurturing influence. If he strikes it lucky, it might have a positive effect on him; he might be overawed by the wealth that he has. He might even feel guilty that he did not deserve so much and wants to part with it, saying it was his responsibility to pay back to society.

Whereas, others would behave in a completely different way. They would not want to spend or lose the money and would hoard it.

Influence 2: circumstances

Some of our qualities are a result of the way we are brought up and the circumstances we live in. Can skinflints be created by circumstances?

Let's take the example of a person belonging to a reasonably comfortable middle-class family. He loses a lot of money because of some bad deal – a stock market crash, a real estate deal gone wrong, unplanned expense or a marriage that went wrong, after a heavy expense.

When this happens, he suddenly finds himself depleted of resources. His circumstances compel him to spend less money on events. So when it comes to eating out, he prefers a modest restaurant to a 5-star hotel. That is fine. But if he begins to think, ‘I don't have the money and in any case what will happen to my family after I am dead and gone? So let us not bother eating out, let's just cook at home and be satisfied ...' Now that's taking things too far.

If a man loses all his money due to unforeseen circumstances, he may become deeply insecure about money and never be generous again. Is that possible?

It may or may not be (possible). A person who suddenly loses money develops insecurity about money and might grow up to distrust money. He might feel that he had a lot of emotional investment in that money and [without] it, feels shattered and insecure.

So he says, “I don't want to reach a stage (again) where I am once more so emotionally dependant on money. So whatever money I have that is extra, let me give it away'.''

So you see, you will find people who are desperate to get rid of their extra money because they are afraid that if they have a lot of it (money), they may get very attached to it.

Similarly, a former skinflint might turn extravagant if he makes a lot of money.

Yes, that could also happen. But I believe that if by doing so it makes a person happy, then it's a healthy attitude. But if it causes stress and affects his social or personal life instead, then it is unhealthy and he should not (be extravagant).

Essentially, three broad areas influence a man's attitude towards money – nature, circumstances and parents.

Delhi-based psychoanalyst Sanjay Chugh talks to Friday about how these three influences shape people into skinflints, spendthrifts or something in between or outside of them.

Influence 3: parents

If a man has one parent who is generous with money and another who is not and they constantly argue about this, how would this affect the child?

He would be confused. There is a likelihood of him running away from home or stealing money so that he can lead a more comfortable or more materialistic lifestyle than his parents were allowing him. He may even decide to make a lot of money once he grows up, so that he does not have to walk that path again.

If a child is from a modest-income family but feels the peer pressure of rich friends, will that lead him to want to be rich later in life? Will he cast aside his values to get to his goal?

Probably. So long as he is a child and with the family, the family is the main influence on him. But when he becomes an adolescent, his main influence is his peer group.

So if he has rich friends, the child – whether he likes it or not – is going to be compelled to join this game of oneupmanship. He will feel compelled to start doing things to ensure that he does not feel inferior when he is with his friends. And this could [develop into] into a pattern in which he looks for shortcuts (to get rich) all the time.

He would probably become attracted to get-rich-quick schemes – meaning putting his ethics, morals and values to one side – because he does not want to ever feel inferior to other people due to a lack of money.

What aspects of life help a person maintain a balanced outlook on money?

We need balance in all aspects of our existence. It could be personal, interpersonal, social, occupational or in the way you would wish to spend your leisure hours. If you don't maintain a balance, you'll always be in trouble.

For example: drinking 1 or 2 glasses of milk daily is good for health, but drinking 8 to 10 glasses a day will lead to having a bad stomach. Similarly, if you are careful with money, it's a balanced approach. But if you are stingy, it is, ironically and inversely, akin to drinking several glasses of milk a day.

Following the middle path will make you a happier and more content person than you would be otherwise.

Sometimes, a parent who has come from an impoverished background but has done well tends to go on and on about how difficult it was and how much he sacrificed for his children and so on. Such constant harping on the past can have three results:

1. The child empathises with the history and uses money carefully.

2. The child gets terrified at such stories and ends up becoming a miser.

3. He gets tired of the ‘money mantra' and decides to blow every penny when he gets older.

It could have these and a lot of other consequences, such as:
- The child resenting the father for constantly talking about how much he has done for the family and how little the family is doing for him.

- The child idolising his father and wanting to become like him – so he ends up struggling through life, so that his family in turn is comfortable.

- The child's life might not necessarily revolve around money, but the father's behaviour could affect other aspects of his life, including his values and his ability to sacrifice and empathise.

How should parents refer to their past history of struggle and sacrifice when trying to impart them as lessons to their children?

A child's mind filters out a lot of what parents say by way of a lecture, especially if the lecture is repetitive.

So if parents want their children to learn lessons, they must realise that what they do is much more important than what they say. Actions speak louder than words.

If you are to be a role model, get the child to see you doing things that have a positive influence on him. But if you only say what a wonderful father or mother you are, and actually do everything contrary to that image, you end up leaving the child with a dilemma.

For example, if a father tells his child that he should not lie to anyone but is seen to be lying about his day at work, etec, every day, that creates confusion.

The child will not know whether to believe his father or not. This will impact on other aspects of his life as well. If he grows up under this influence, he is likely to have problems with his self-esteem, self-image and self-confidence. He will not know what is the correct course of action to follow in a given circumstance, because his role model has taught him that nothing is consistent.