Shop Happy, Shop Better: Moody Buyers Make Bad Purchasing Decisions
They may call it ‘retail therapy,’ but shopping while in a bad mood is more likely to do you harm than good—and research confirms it: A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research suggests shoppers don’t make the most “efficient assessments” when feeling blue. Instead, we tend only to consider the positive sides of something we want.
Makes sense: Part of the reason so many people like to shop when they’re down is that buying something you want triggers a momentary rush of pleasure. It’s easy to see how you might over-exaggerate the benefits you’ll derive from buying that dress or juicer or pint of ice cream when feeling otherwise unhappy—and downplay any nagging thoughts about what it will do to your bank account or girlish figure .
“We are remarkably good at coming up with after-the-fact justifications for how we arrive at our judgments, lead researcher Paul M. Herr told The Atlantic. But left to our own devices and when in negative moods, we focus on liking questions only and tend to get confirming responses.
The health takeaway here seems to be: Don’t shop for groceries or go out to eat when unhappy, at least not without deciding exactly what you’re going to get beforehand. [Being hungry make you grumpy? Always. Carry. Snacks; my purse is rife with Lara Bars.] Happy folks are more likely to evaluate both the good and bad attributes of products, and do so faster, as well.
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Tags: Bad, Bad Purchasing