The New Science Behind Your Spending Addiction
Newsweek, by Sharon Begley and Jean Chatzky
“Pleasure now is worth more to us than pleasure later,” says economist William Dickens of Northeastern University. “We much prefer current consumption to future consumption. It may even be wired into us.”…
Research has also shown that having a good short-term (or “working”) memory is associated with being able to project yourself into the future and plan for it, which is a prerequisite of saving…
“Being unable to delay gratification is not something we’re stuck with for life,” says psychologist Walter Mischel (now at Columbia University). And a public that is infatuated with brain scans should know that just because a brain behaves in a particular way does not mean that it is hard-wired to do so…
“You develop willpower and patience through practice,” he says. “If you defer gratification, the payoff can be greater than with immediate gratification,” says neuroeconomist Paul Zak of Claremont Graduate University, “but your brain has to learn that.”…
Economists are waiting to see how the entitled, indulged children of helicopter parents will behave… for many of those raised in two-career households, “no” was a word they seldom heard from their parents…
Today’s culture of one-click shopping and instant messaging doesn’t merely satisfy our desire for instant gratification, it encourages it.
Source: Newsweek (XXX)
.
