Today in the New York Times, columnist and humorist John Tierney writes about how Stanford scientists are using functional MRI scans (fMRI) to segment people into different buying profiles. One interesting excerpt:
“We developed this propensity to experience direct pain when we spend money,” Dr. Loewenstein said. “This explains why tightwads won’t spend money even when they should. It also helps to explain why we overspend on credit cards, and why people prefer all-you-can-eat buffets instead of paying for each item they order. We like schemes that remove the immediate pain of paying.”
So you can actually see parts of the brain that light up when we get sticker shock. I am usually against mechanistic explanations for the complexity of human behaviour, but this observation's pretty compelling if it holds up. They've gone as far as to be able to differentiate between "tightwads" (people who won't spend, even if it hurts them) and "spendthrifts" (people who spend more than they should). And now they're starting to canvas the U.S. population to see if there are more tightwads or spendthrifts.
Link to the New York Times article
Link to the research paper
