Gratitude: Good for Your Wallet and Your Soul

The Huffington Post:

Enticements to consumerism define our society like never before. From our tablets, to our email, to our smartphones, the next advertisement and the next purchase are only a click away. The result? The impulse buy — the cash cow of many a business strategy — is more tempting than ever, leading many to experience both increasing debt and buyers’ remorse.

As a psychologist who studies decision making, I’m acutely aware that marketers know how the mind works, and they aren’t hesitant to use that knowledge to stoke consumers’ desires and lessen their self-control. Tactics emphasizing scarcity (“only 10 televisions at this price in stock”), delayed cost (“0 percent interest until 2016”) and status (“be among the first to get the next “it” product) are employed to great effect.

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Answers to these questions allowed us to calculate annual discount factors for each person, which reflect how much a given amount to be received in one year is valued relative to the same amount received immediately. As we reported in an article in Psychological Science last year, those feeling neutral (the ones who described their daily routine) demonstrated the usual preference for immediate reward: On average, they viewed receiving $17 now as equivalent to getting $100 in a year. Those feeling happy and amused were similar: They would sacrifice $100 in a year for $18 in the moment.

Read the whole story: The Huffington Post