When the Going Gets Tough…
The tough go shopping. Just as we were running out of steam on our Socratic dialogue on happiness, the Wall Street Journal weighs in on the joys of shopping.
A study to be published in the June edition of Psychological Science magazine found that research subjects who viewed a “sad” video of a boy mourning the death of his father offered to pay four times as much for an item than those who were shown a “neutral” nature video.
In other words, if you shop to fight depression, like Carrie Bradshaw in “Sex in The City”, you are going to end up with a closet full of stuff you don’t need.
Research shows that people often do get a high from shopping — the brain releases chemicals such as dopamine or serotonin when a person is stimulated by discovering something new, such as a handbag. In 2006, a paper in the American Journal of Psychiatry noted that a survey of 2,500 adults showed that 6% of women and 5.5% of men displayed symptoms consistent with a compulsive buying disorder.
“I’ll have what she’s having.” Wasn’t that the line in response to Sally’s public demonstration of the theatrical forensics of the fake orgasm? So the lady delivering the punchline wants to partake of the fake of a fake? Amazing.
The great Sport of Shopping, as distinguished from provisioning, is a manic outbreak of the perfect indifferentiation of needs and wants. Its players are Homo Heteronymous: that being which needs to want, but can want only what it sees others desiring.
Come lose yourself in Shopping!
I can’t believe they actually had to do a study on this subject. . . it’s called retail THERAPY for a reason
[...] and get in our cars to buy the “Stuff” that we spent all week making the money for. We flock to the malls, the stores, the restaurants and we become better people for it. Until we feel empty and hollow and feel the compulsion to go shopping again. What happens to all [...]
[...] in and get in our cars to buy the “Stuff” that we spent all week making the money for. We flock to the malls, the stores, the restaurants and we become better people for it. Until we feel empty and hollow and feel the compulsion to go shopping again. What happens to all [...]