Buyology

Buyology shows you how to spend less money by revealing the psychological traps that companies use to hack your brain and get you to purchase their products without you even realizing they’re doing it.

Who are you with right now? Try yawning and pay close attention to anyone that follows suit. Did anybody copy you? If not, you can try it with a close friend or significant other. Usually, it’s tough to resist yawning when we see someone else do it.

This is because mirror neurons in our brains make us want to mimic others actions. One study revealed this effect in monkeys. Certain parts of the brain lit up when they were grabbing a nut and when they were watching another monkey do it too.

Human brains work this way, too. Whether we’re performing an action or watching someone else do it, our brains react almost the same. So in an advertisement, when you see someone sipping Coca-Cola or wearing an Abercrombie & Fitch shirt, your brain wants to mimic them, so you buy.

Dopamine also works in conjunction with mirror neurons to persuade you to make purchases. This pleasure hormone is present when we go shopping and can make us spend more than we might normally.

Let’s look at evolution to understand this. When we spend money to get new things, we consider it a status upgrade. And this trait, which we got from our ancient ancestors, makes us more likely to reproduce. The dopamine hit we get when shopping is our body’s evolutionary response to get us to do things that will make it more likely we’ll have more offspring.

Using mirror neurons to entice us to buy is devious but not completely harmful. But not all marketing tactics are so nice. Some take advantage of our negative emotions like fear to get us to shop more. Think about the last time you were scared. What did you want most? To not be afraid, right? You could say that you sought safety. Sometimes that security comes to us in the form of a product the seller is advertising as relief from the fears we have. A shaving cream commercial, for example, might tug on your fear of living alone by emphasizing the unattractiveness of unkempt hair. But they also give you the solution in their product. Using it to spruce yourself up and become more attractive is shown as a place of safety from what you’re afraid of. One example of this working particularly well was a commercial that Lyndon B. Johnson used when running for president. A child is shown enjoying some daisies when a nuclear explosion goes off in the background. Johnson’s ad positioned himself…