Do Chick-magnets really work? Corvettes, Testosterone & Peahens
We all know the cliché of the middle-aged man who responds to a “mid-life crisis” by buying a Corvette. Other cultures and times have their own versions of the Corvette, but the principle appears to be...
View ArticleShe’s not looking at you: What really inspires a woman to go shopping
Recently, I have discussed research demonstrating that when men engage in conspicuous consumption, such as buying an expensive sports car, they are often doing so in order to signal to potential mates...
View ArticleAnd the poor get poorer: How our life histories shape our response to...
In a recent post, we discussed research that demonstrated that when women are faced with competition for mates, they tend to respond by spending more money on appearance-enhancing products (i.e.,...
View ArticleHow to Budget so that Your Emotions do not Affect your Financial Stability.
In the current economic climate, it is perhaps more imperative than ever to be able to learn how to manage money. Pensions may not exist by the retirement age for most young people today as a direct...
View ArticleSunshine on my portfolio makes me happy
There are armies of very smart, very well educated, numbers- and facts-focused people on Wall Street and in other stock exchanges around the globe. The sharpest minds from the best schools compete at...
View ArticleThe self-enhancement bias: Or, how I ended up with the Slap Chop
Recently, a friend of mine was asked how tall he was. He quickly replied, Do you mean in person or online? He was joking of course, but the joke is funny because we all know that people tend to, well…...
View ArticleIf everyone is winning, how come we all lose so much? The perils of hot stock...
I have a friend — we’ll call her Ai — who has made some disastrous investment decisions. You see, Ai worked for a long time in the high tech sector, where Ai was exposed to a large number of tech...
View ArticleWhat drives us to get our bling on
According to the urban dictionary, the term bling came in to the modern vocabulary in the 1990s, possibly imported from Jamaica by American rappers, and meant to indicate either the imagined play of...
View ArticleSpoiler Alert — Vanity Sizing: How what you don’t, err, didn’t know is making...
I can say without hesitation (but with considerable vanity) that I wear the same size clothes now as I did 20 years ago. I’ve always fit quite well into jeans with a 31” waist. It was that way in...
View ArticleThe Devil Wears Prada: Is That Why She Is so Unhappy?
Have you ever seen “The Devil Wears Prada”? I can’t comment on the cinematic greatness of the film, but there is something fascinating in the experience of watching the movie. If you haven’t seen it,...
View ArticleIf You’re Happy and You Know It, Check Your Text
I have been asking people to tell me about their happiness since 2003. It is a fun topic to talk about; sometimes I find that people don’t often think much about their own well-being. However, there...
View ArticleDo Our Values Predict What We Buy?
Every day more and more people are trying to understand the relationship between money and happiness. Lately I have been thinking about, what seems like, a simple question: do our values predict what...
View ArticleWhat do personality traits tell us about consumer behavior?
This is a guest blog entry by Kyle Thomas, V.P. of Research at TipTap Lab and Ph.D. candidate, Psychology at Harvard University. While researchers can determine, quite easily, consumer behaviors from...
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