Study: Believing in an item’s worth makes us cheery — for a short time

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Simply put, “you look hot in them,” says Couch, who’s 23 and lives in Dallas. (The shoes were a Christmas gift from her mom, and although she doesn’t know the exact price, the status symbol stilettos usually cost upwards of $600.) “It's something that sets you apart from everyone and everything else.”

But wouldn’t she feel just as hot in a knockoff pair from Steve Madden? Maybe not, experts say. The more we believe an item is worth, the happier we are with our purchase — at least for a short time, says a study released today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study's participants were hooked up to brain scan machines and instructed to take a sip from five glasses of wine, which ranged from $5 to $90 a bottle. When they were told they were drinking a glass of wine from a $90 bottle, brain scans showed increased activity in the medial orbital frontal cortex, the area of the brain that registers pleasure — even if the person was actually knocking back the price equivalent of two-buck chuck.

“It’s very weird, I know,” admits Antonio Rangel, the lead author of the study and an associate economics professor at California Institute of Technology. “But people believe that more expensive prices are correlated with higher quality. So if you believe something better is happening to you, that affects the way your brain handles the experience.”

Rangel says that what his team found to be true with wine is likely true in homes, department stores and closets across the country: You kind of like your Camry, but you'd really love a Mercedes. You're OK with your Levi's, but you'd be happier with Citizens. And you’re only happy with your Coach handbag because you don’t have one by Chloe.

Happiness, it seems, is just a purchase away — an idea that’s unsettling to psychologist April Benson.

“So many people want more than they have because they want to be more than they are — so buying more equals being more,” says Benson, who lives in New York City and is the author of “I Shop, Therefore I Am.”

To Benson, what's particularly troubling about the study's finding is that some people may be confusing an item's worth with their own self-worth. These folks, she worries, will always be racing toward their next purchase, always inwardly questioning: Will this make me happy?

The happiness that follows a pricey purchase may be in part an immediate attempt to rationalize the money you just dropped. “We then start to think about it: ‘Huh, I must be worth it. I must be worth a lot if I’m buying this expensive item,’” Benson says.

Not to worry, bargain hunters — there’s joy to be found in Nordstrom Rack, as well. “The fact that you just found a good deal is enjoyable in its own self,” Rangel says. In other words, it's not the price you pay, it's what you believe something's worth.

Sadly, it’s a fleeting kind of glee. The brain scan study showed that the brain's pleasure centers only reacted to the enjoyment of the pricey wine for a few seconds, or just a few beats longer than it took to swallow. After that, your retail joy is gone. And so is your money.

“You can never get enough of what you don’t really need,” says Benson. “And if people are looking for purchases to meet their psychological needs, it’s not too likely that the purchases can do that.”

But that, emphasizes the Louboutin-clad Couch, is not the point. The real source of her shoes’ power is in their ability to set her apart from the crowd — in a club, in photos from said club and in said photos from said club posted on her Facebook profile.

“It’s so worth the pain, so worth the price, so worth whatever — it’s totally worth it,” Couch says, “cause you look really hot.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22614130/

“You can never get enough of what you don’t really need” - trasatura definitorie a omului "modern".

E indicat sa cunoastem ce ne inconjoara.


Meet the Pilgrim Father
Metro London,14th Jan 2008


Seventy-one-year-old Indian-born Satish Kumar became a Jain monk at the age of nine, and then embarked on an 8,000-mile peace pilgrimage at 18. Since 1973, he has lived in Devon and edited the ecological magazine Resurgence.

Here he tells the Metro how educating people to respect nature can change the world.

Generally, we go into nature either for a kind of holiday, for entertainment or to look at nature as an object. An Earth pilgrim is someone who goes into nature with a reverential mindset and for a sense of connectedness.

Most people think nature exists purely to be exploited by humans, but an Earth pilgrim has an attitude of ecological humility. As Hindu pilgrims go to the Ganges in India, we go into nature with respect. And we receive so much in return: clean water, oxygen from the trees, food from the soil.

So we need to show gratitude rather than thinking it is our right to take everything. If we change our way of looking at nature, then environmental problems such as global warming will disappear.

I say in the documentary: 'I don't look to the sky to find heaven. My heaven is here on Earth.' Even though I've been walking on Dartmoor for 40 years, I learn new things every time I go.

The more I walk, the more I can appreciate the profound beauty, generosity and economy of nature. The system is so beautifully designed, I become a student of nature; it's a different kind of Bible, of Koran, of Shakespeare.

The intricacy, the beauty and the organisation are so wonderful that you wish humans were able to mimic nature – we'd be much better off. Half of humanity goes to bed without food and we think we are advanced. But we have such a bad economic, political and social design.

Nature's design is so adequate – a flower never complains that a honeybee took too much nectar.

I find this well-balanced, beautiful dance every time I go on Dartmoor. It's almost a mystical experience.

It might seem as though it's easier for me to feel this way because I was a monk from the age of nine but everyone can access that state of mind.

The main advice I give is to go out and experience nature at least one or two days a week. Don't read newspapers or watch TV indoors but, whatever the weather, go out walking. You will have a transformative experience.

Every school and university should make it obligatory that, for one day a week, nature is the classroom. Not sitting in front of computers but sitting under a tree without cameras or notebooks, just observing. Then I think we'd have more Newtons and more Buddhas.

Scientists always saw the Earth as a kind of machine, like a clock. But it doesn't work like a clock, it works like a living system, a self-organising, self-connecting system. That is the old spiritual, mystical view – and it is now a scientific view, according to Gaia theory.

Ecology and economy go hand in hand. Those two words come from the same Greek root 'oikos', which means home. Ecology comes from 'logos', meaning 'knowledge of home'.

Economy means 'management of home'. How can you manage a home without knowing it? Everyone talks about 'economy, economy, economy' – but economy cannot be without ecology.

Our education system is 50 years behind. It is still teaching young people that fossil fuel-based mass production and economic growth without concern for ecology is the paradigm.

But the industrial system of production and distribution is what's causing global warming. So, education needs to change to embrace ecology.


http://www.metro.co.uk/news/climatewatch/article.html?in_article_id=83898&in_page_id=59