Tuesday, March 04, 2008

 

neuroeconomics 1

Decision making and emotion

This article has come to me this morning through Google Alerts. The basic idea is that scientists are surprised that people do not always act rationally and are severely influenced by their emotions.

The subject of emotions is extremely complex to study. There is not a single answer, at least not yet. Therefore there cannot be a simple answer to the question why people buy things when emotionally sad.

I would like to suggest one possible solution here. The core of my notion is that the solution lies in hierarchy of human society. There are symbols, signs of hierarchy; some of them are well-known as status symbols, cars, houses, expensive fur coats etc. The more you can buy the higher you are in the human society. There is a strong drive in many people to get as high as possible in this human hierarchy. But more general the findings show that it is normally not so important for people to get really extremely high in the hierarchy, but it is really important for them not to be the last on in the hierarchy.

The position of the last one in the hierarchy cannot be exactly determined; therefore people try to get higher as they do not know if they are not still the last ones. If some one feels sad he/she feels down and in order to contradict this feeling they buy things as they believe these things as status symbols will bring them up again, and it is usually the case.

Many observations have been mad as far as buying habits are concerned. In the times of personal success people usually buy dark furniture, if they are in the need of buying some furniture at that time. In the times of personal depression people usually buy white or light furniture if they are in the situation of buying some furniture at that time. Obviously, color of furniture is indirectly related to the personal economic and emotional situation.

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