Your brain is conned to spend, spend, spend. Here's how to take back control

We really should know better. Despite the neon-lit fact that we're in the depths of the credit crunch, official figures show that last month we splurged on shoes and clothes, spending about 9 per cent more than this time last year. Why is it so hard to restrain our retail urges? A new study helps to confirm that when we're shopping, our brains are not our own. We might think we are in control, but in fact the big levers are grabbed by our primitive drives.

Worse, the marketing industry has spent billions scientifically perfecting ways to hijack your hyper-emotional primordial circuits into buying stuff that your sensible higher brain knows you don't need or particularly want. The good news is that much of this research can be turned on its head - instead of bamboozling our brains into breaking the bank, we can kid our instincts into spending less. Here's how:

Give yourself - and your purse - a break

Pausing briefly between choosing something and taking it to the checkout can dramatically boost the chance of the cash staying in your purse, says a study to be published in December's Journal of Consumer Research. Wendy Liu, of the University of California, Los Angeles, ran four tests where she interrupted people's purchasing. She found that a break in the buying process changed their priorities. Before the interruption, shoppers fixated on whether the object they desired was a bargain. After the interruption, they returned with a far more objective, higher-brained view - did they really want the thing at all?

The need to cool off our consumer brains is reinforced by Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. His brain-scan studies show how the feelgood-chemical dopamine is released in waves as shoppers see a product and ponder buying it. But dopamine is all about the hunt, not the trophy: only the anticipation, rather than the buying, squirts the chemical. Once you've sealed the deal, the chemical high dissipates in minutes, often leaving a sense of regret that retailers call “buyer's remorse”. With practice, you can get your hormone kicks from window-shopping: no purchase necessary.

Don't even touch your cards

Four studies on 330 people in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied confirm the suspicion that it is much easier to spend money in the form of a credit card. The New York University-led report concludes that we regard anything but hard cash as “Monopoly play money” and that real currency is the only thing that gives you the “pain of paying”. Credit cards might not only anaesthetise retail pain, they may create a physical craving to get the dopamine high from spending, says Professor Drazen Prelec, a psychologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He cautions in Marketing Letters that when you see and touch the plastic it is just like smelling biscuits baking when you are hungry: you feel compelled to splurge to satisfy the craving.

Keep brands out of your brain

Designer brands have proved unprecedentedly effective at persuading you to spend more money on “special” goods that are actually only of average quality. Brands are painstakingly developed to encourage people to identify with them, to believe that their favourite labels have exactly the same human values as they do. A study in the Journal of Advertising Research reveals how our Stone Age brains are built to relate to other people and animals - and this way of relating attaches to inanimate objects, too. We habitually anthropomorphise, which is why many of us call our cars “she” and give them cute names. In similar fashion, we increasingly attribute human-like personality traits to brands.

The research shows that we can even believe that the brand has an attitude towards us, so we develop tight “primary” relationships with it that are on a par with marriage and kinship. So instead of simply choosing between products, subconsciously we think we are picking life partners and powerful new tribes, and that we can buy our way into higher group status.

Don't shop with friends

Jennifer Argo, an assistant professor of marketing at Alberta University's School of Business, realised that whenever she went shopping with a friend, she changed her habits, choosing costlier foods and clothes. Argo employed mystery shoppers to stand by a rack of batteries, and found that their mere presence made the battery buyers pick the most expensive brand. If no one was there, they chose cheaply. The result, published in The Journal of Consumer Research, was consistent in three separate studies. “We will spend more money to maintain our self-image in front of others,” she says. One answer, according to a separate study, may be to shop with your relatives: we buy fewer things when visiting stores under the eagle eyes of family members.

Staying calm costs less

We might be more liable to spree when financially squeezed: under stress we can feel driven to hoard, says a study of students in Behavioural Research Therapy. This might have an evolutionary explanation: getting gripped by the urge to stockpile provisions in times of threat would have helped our ancestors' survival. This residual instinct can also help to explain how sales campaigns may work en masse by collectively preying on our deepest insecurities - you smell bad, you're not good enough, no one likes you.

Be suspicious of special offers

Chainstores love to make you feel that you are getting a generous deal, because this makes you buy more than you need. When you see special offers on the shelves, your rational brain tends to go soppy with thanks and makes you want to return the favour by splashing out on unnecessary items. It's called the “spill-over effect”. Here, at least, it's worth honing your ingratitude.

Think global, feel richer

A study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation last year found that wealthy Londoners no longer feel rich, because they do not mix with less affluent people any more. We need to look wider, to the global neighbourhood. About half of humanity lives on less than £1 a day according to the UN. Meanwhile, a fifth of the Earth's people buy nearly 90 per cent of all the consumer goods. That's us, the stressed guys in the wealthy neighbourhood.

Satisfice yourself

“Satisficing”, in social-science jargon, is the sensibly shod alternative to maximising. When you satisfice, you don't let an impossible quest for the perfect option destroy your enjoyment of the merely OK. The credit crunch is an opportunity to decide that life in the West today, with its unheralded levels of healthcare, home comfort and personal safety, is pretty much as good as it will get, and there is actually no need to try buying more contentment. We just need to convince our primitive brains of this.

你的大脑只知道花钱、花钱、花钱。下面这篇文章告诉你怎样收回对大脑的控制权。

我们真的应该更加了解。尽管已经深陷信贷危机，但官方数据表明，上个月，人们在鞋子、服装上面的开销比去年同期增长了9%。为什么控制我们的购买冲动如此困难？一项新的研究有助于证实：在购买东西时，我们的大脑会失去理智。我们也许会认为自己尽在掌握中，但事实上，我们却在受原始冲动的支配。

更糟的是，营销行业花费了大量资金，不断完善劫持人们超情绪原始回路（hyper-emotional primordial circuit）的方法，让人不禁购买那些本不需要或不是特别想要的东西。然而好消息是，这项研究带给我们一些启示：不要被大脑骗得倾家荡产，我们可以骗过本能，借此节省开支。详见下文：

1.让你和你的钱包喘口气

将于十二月份在《消费者研究》杂志发表的一项研究表明：在挑选商品和付款之间短短暂停一下，这能显著提高把钱留在口袋里的机会。洛杉矶加州大学的Wendy Liu在人们买东西时，打断了他们的购买，对他们做了四项测验。她发现，购买过程的中断改变了人们优先考虑的事情。在中断前，购买者关注的是他们想要的东西是否打折。在中断后，他们回到了更加客观、理性的状态——他们真的一定要买这些东西吗？

平静消费者大脑的必要性得到了乔治亚州亚特兰大市埃默里大学神经学家Gregory Berns的支持。他的脑扫描研究显示，在人们看到某件物品并考虑购买它时，让人感到快乐的一种化学物质——多巴胺得到了阵阵释放。但多巴胺只和寻觅过程有关，和得到战利品无关：只有预期，而不是购买，能释放这种物质。一旦你付了钱，多巴胺在几分钟内迅速消散，常常给人留下后悔的感觉——商家称之为“购买者的懊悔”。通过练习，你能通过浏览橱窗刺激你的激素——不需要真正购买。

2.别碰信用卡

《实验心理学》杂志记载了对330人所做的四项研究：这些研究用于证实这样一个假设——通过信用卡付款更容易花钱。纽约大学主导的一份报告得出结论：除了现金，我们把所有东西都视为“某种游戏货币（Monopoly play money）”，只有真正的钞票能给你带来“付款的痛苦”。麻省理工学院心理学家Drazen Prelec教授说，信用卡不仅麻醉了这种痛苦，而且它能增加从花钱中获得多巴胺的欲望。他在《市场快报》中提醒人们，当看到、接触到信用卡时，就像饥饿的人闻到烤饼干的味道：你将感到不得不挥霍，以满足自己的欲望。

3.忽略品牌

设计师品牌能非常有效的说服你为“特定”商品花费更多的钱，尽管事实上这些商品的品质很普通。这些品牌煞费苦心的让人们认可它们，使人们相信，购买喜爱的品牌非常值得。《广告研究》杂志上的一项研究显示了我们古老的大脑如何应付其他人类和动物——这也包括了与没有生命的东西。我们常常会人格化，这就是为什么许多人称自己的车为“她”并给它们取些可爱的名字。对于时尚来说也是如此，我们不断的给品牌赋予类似人的性格特征。

研究显示，人们甚至认为品牌对人们有态度，因此人们对品牌产生了紧密的“原始”关联，就像婚姻和亲属关系一样。因此人们不再是简单的选择商品，而是下意识的认为在挑选生活伴侣和有力的新群体，这样，人们可以买到达到更高群体地位的途径。

4.别和朋友一起购物

阿尔伯塔大学商学院行销专业助理教授Jennifer Argo发现，每次她和朋友购物时，她会改变自己的习惯，购买更贵的食物和衣服。Argo雇佣一些秘密顾客去购买电池，结果发现，只要这些人出现，真正的购买者就会挑选最贵的电池品牌。而如果他们不在时，顾客则会选择便宜的。这个发表于《消费者研究》杂志上的结果与其他另外三项独立研究一致。“在别人面前，我们会花更多的钱来维持自我形象，”她说。在一项独立研究中提到了一个例外，和亲戚逛街：在家人锐利的目光下逛商店，我们买的东西更少。

5.保持冷静，花费更少

当经济紧缩时，我们可能会变得更加疯狂：在压力之下，我们会感到被迫囤积东西。这也许可以从进化的角度来解释：储存粮食有助于我们的祖先存活下来。这些残留下来的本能同样能解释促销活动总能起作用，促销抓住了人们最深的不安全感——你散发臭味，你不够好，没人喜欢你。

6.留意特别优惠的商品

连锁店喜欢让你感到你抓住了大量机会，因为这会使买更多的东西。当在货架上看到特别优惠的商品时，你会变得失去理性，认为自己非常幸运，使你认为自己应该归还这个人情，于是买了一堆不需要的东西。这就叫做“溢出效应”。要想突破这一点，你需要把脸皮练得更厚。

7.综合考虑，感到更富有

Joseph Rowntree基金会资助的一项研究去年发现，富有的伦敦人不再感到富有，因为他们不再和比他们穷的人交往。我们应该看得更广，放眼全球。根据联合国的数据，全球有半数的人每天的开销不到一英镑。同时，五分之一的人购买了全球将近90%的消费品。这就是我们，在富人中感到巨大压力的人们。

8.做出满意选择

“满意选择（Satisficing）”，在社会科学术语中表示选择最大号的鞋子。当你做了满意选择，你就不会为了一个不可能的最优选择而毁了感觉还可以的乐趣。信贷紧缩是一个做出决定的机会：当今的西方生活，包括不可预料的医疗保健、居住环境、人身安全状况，在未来也会很好，实际不需要购买更多的满足。我们只需说服我们的大脑看清这一点。