I use shopping as an excuse for everything, bad or good. My almost-boyfriend just broke up with me, I go shopping. I failed a test, I go shopping. My ex-boyfriend’s Walmart-version-of-me girlfriend dumped him, I go shopping. I get 100% on a presentation, I go shopping. I know what you’re thinking, “money doesn’t buy happiness, blah blah blah.” Maybe it doesn’t buy long-term happiness, but it does buy contour sticks, which means it buys happiness.
So this is about to get dark and twisted real quick. Some scientists did some science things to see what the effect shopping would have on people who were told to think about their deaths (figuratively speaking). The study was published earlier this year in the Journal of Consumer Affairs, and I’m just glad they did’t ask me to participate in pondering my own death, because there can only be one cause, death by dick bicycle (too much or not enough, never in between, always ends in death).
The researchers selected two groups: people who spend sparingly and people who spend $300 on throw pillows. Both groups were asked to write down their feelings about their own deaths and a description of what they thought would happen to them when they died. No one in the study wrote down death by dick bicycle. Prudes.
So after everyone was all weirded out because they had been thinking about what their corpses were going to look like all day long, they filled out a survey that told whether or not they would make extravagant purchases before they died.
Pretty standard results, the frugal people didn’t use their imminent death as an excuse to splurge, and the materialistic people spent their money like their was no tomorrow, probably because there wouldn’t be a tomorrow if they were dead.
So the research people and the science people used all that good stuff to come to the conclusion that those who normally spend more money used spending as emotional therapy to help cope with their deaths. Cool, science..
[via Elite Daily]
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