Salon sums up a new study which finds unhappy people spend more…
Basically, being unhappy turns adults into the children from the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment, only instead of eating our marshmallows too soon, we’re buying homes we can’t afford and running up crushing amounts of debt on our credit cards. As the study suggests, this is a psychological tick that has serious policy implications. According to [researcher Jennifer] Lerner, “Public-policy design and implementation need to be based on consideration of the full range of psychological processes through which decisions are made. Fully understanding these processes may also help address the economic problems associated with Americans’ increasing reliance on credit cards.”
Which came first: the sadness or the debt? Help for both in the links below.
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