It dulls the region which rationalizes the decision of making a purchase. Second, don't take painkillers before going to the store. After 30 minutes, you most likely don't want half of what you originally had in your shopping cart. ![]() That gives the rational part of the brain time to calculate the necessity. Leave the store and go for a quick walk around the block. First, take some time before you actually buy the product. Is there any way I can arm myself against all this? Sounds like people become pretty brainless while they are out shopping. And when you feel comfortable you don't mind the pain of spending money as much. Stores also play music a lot because it creates a pleasant atmosphere. But at the end of the day, these products were sold most frequently even though there was no actual discount. We did an experiment with red signs that advertised regular prices throughout the store. When entering a store, I am being confronted with lots of different stimuli. They have tons of stuff at home they will never even unpack. For some people shopping even becomes a serious addiction. The switch sends a signal to the rest of the brain saying 'No need to compare prices or to overthink! One day it might come in handy'. Our brain kind of flips a switch in these situations. So, why do we buy all the discounted items in stores? Simply because they are cheap? The brain automatically associates red sale signs with a discount. It applies to heroin, especially to cocaine but also to amphetamines. They also activate the reward system and stimulate a pleasant feeling. That sounds almost like deals trigger the same reaction as drugs.ĭrugs work pretty much the same way. This means if you take painkillers, you act uncritically because the pain of spending money is being dulled. Spending a lot of money actually hurts after a while. On the other hand, there are structures comparable to the uncomfortable feeling associated with pain. We also know which neurotransmitters are active in the brain. And since we also know how the different anatomic structures in the brain function, we could tell that shopping activates the reward system the most. We were able to measure the exact traces of certain thoughts. In the magnetic resonance tomograph one can, hyperbolically speaking, watch the brain think. You watch brain processes like they would happen when someone is out shopping in a machine called a magnetic resonance tomograph. Professor and neuroscientist, Christian Elger. You just grab and buy without properly considering factors like necessity. ![]() ![]() But when being confronted with discounts, this region is barely active. To compensate, we have regions in our brain that are supposed to rationalize whether the purchase is necessary or not. And that feeling is so strong that our brain tends to forget everything else in that moment.Ĭompared to regular prices, words like 'sale' or 'deal' activate the reward system a lot more. Whenever these structures are activated, different groups of neurons are triggered. Elger, why are deals and discounts so tempting for us?Ĭhristian Elger: In our brain, we have structures called the reward system. ![]() DW: Days like Black Friday, are entirely devoted to shopping and scoring cheap deals and with Christmas right around the corner people are buying billions of presents around the globe.
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