Title: Shopping IS Good For You: How Manolos Can Save Your Life
Headings: Shopping IS Good For You: How Manolos Can Save Your Life
Shopping IS Good For You: How Manolos Can Save Your Life
Content: In a paper published last year, researchers at the UK's Brunel University noted that shopping is associated with increased activity in the left prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that has been linked to pleasure and positive thinking. In fact, levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter released during pleasurable experiences including sex, can rise sharply even when you're merely window shopping. In another study, published in the journal Neuron, researchers at MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Stanford strapped volunteers to an fMRI machine and showed them photos of products. When shoppers saw something they wanted to buy, a flood of dopamine to the nucleus accumbens--the brain's reward center--lit up their fMRI images like a dashboard. ( The downside: When the charge for those Frye boots shows up on your credit-card statement, that dopamine is nowhere to be found. Sneaky.) Luckily--for your brain, not your bank account--science has discovered a way to sidestep buyer's remorse: Imagine yourself enjoying your purchase a decade from now. Anat Keinan, an assistant professor at the Harvard Business School, and Ran Kivetz, a professor of marketing at Columbia Business School, gave 57 shoppers a hypothetical scenario: