Psych Study Quantifies Therapeutic Spending

The next time you’re feeling a little blue, keep an eye on your spending.

A new study, conducted by a Harvard professor and three colleagues at other universities, has quantified consumers’ tendencies to indulge in purchasing when feeling sad.

The phenomenon of “retail therapy”—buying new clothing or going out to a nice meal to improve one’s mood—is well known, but the authors of the study found indications that it extends even to objects not normally associated with a boost in happiness.

The experiment involved 33 subjects, who were asked to watch either a sad video or a video designed to be emotionally neutral. Afterward, participants were given the opportunity to buy sporty water bottles with the $10 they received for participating. Results showed those who watched the sad video were willing to pay, on average, $2.11 for the bottle, nearly four times as much as the $0.56 that those who watched the neutral video were willing to pay.

This hypothesis that “misery is not miserly” is well known among economists and psychologists, but perhaps not among the general public. Even the participants insisted that the videos played no bearing on their purchasing decisions, which surprised the study’s authors.

Jennifer S. Lerner, a psychologist at the Harvard Kennedy School who helped author the study, could not be reached for comment.

“The study is interesting in a counterintuitive way,” said psychology professor Joshua D. Greene ’97. “You might think that if people are sad, everything seems lousy and material goods aren’t worth their money.”

Students seem to agree.

“It goes against intuition. Coke commercials have people laughing and smiling to associate happiness with spending,” said Elizabeth Tang ’11.

Some people do think money can buy happiness, even if only temporarily.

“If something bad happens, I believe I deserve something uplifting,” said Vicky Guo ’11.

The researchers explained their results with two possible theories: sad, self-focused individuals either indulge in material goods to seek self-enhancement or they feel reduced self-worth and consequently value other things more by comparison.

James J. Gross, one of the authors of the study and a professor at Stanford, said that he and his fellow authors hope to “enlarge the sphere in which our behavior can be controlled.”

To avoid these unconscious urges, Gross said, “people should find solace in other things when feeling sad, such as socializing or athletics, to curtail their spending.”