As the holiday season rolls toward us, online overshoppers may find themselves hideously tempted. Internet merchants are leveraging their natural advantages in convenience, price, and selection, and, like bricks-and-mortar retailers, they’re starting holiday sales earlier than ever. Carrie RattleCarrie Rattle is a Principal at BehavioralCents.com, a website for women focused on mind and money behaviors.… Continue reading A Web Filter for Online Overshoppers
Author: Carrie Rattle
Carrie Rattle is a Principal at BehavioralCents.com, a website for women focused on mind and money behaviors. She has worked in the financial services industry for 20+ years and hopes to inspire women to better prepare themselves for financial independence.
Kick Yourself If Need Be…Don’t Use Shopkick!
Yet another inviting technological marketing ploy has emerged this season—just in time for holiday shopping. Shopkick, a new, free smartphone app, offers reward points for simply checking into stores, more points for scanning products, and still more points for buying. The points can be redeemed for gift cards at participating merchants—presently, Macy’s, American Eagle Outfitters,… Continue reading Kick Yourself If Need Be…Don’t Use Shopkick!
4 Session Interactive Telecourse for Therapists
To Buy or Not to Buy: Theory and Treatment of Compulsive Buying Disorder An interactive 4-session telecourse for mental health professionals taught by April Lane Benson, Ph.D. Editor – I Shop, Therefore I Am: Compulsive Buying and the Search for Self (Aronson, 2000) Author – To Buy or Not to Buy: Why We Overshop and… Continue reading 4 Session Interactive Telecourse for Therapists
SPENT: MEMOIRS OF A SHOPPING ADDICT Why I Wrote Spent by Avis Cardella
For years, I did not speak about my shopping addiction; In fact, I went to great pains to hide it. At the time, I was afraid it wouldn’t be taken seriously, or even laughed at. Therefore, it may seem strange that I managed to pluck up the courage to write a memoir about my fifteen-year… Continue reading SPENT: MEMOIRS OF A SHOPPING ADDICT Why I Wrote Spent by Avis Cardella
What’s Wrong with Haul Videos?
Last April, I wrote: “I’m scratching my head about—and steeling myself for the potential fallout from—a new internet phenomenon, the “Haul Video,” examples of which are popping up on YouTube like mushrooms after a rain.” There are now over a quarter of a million of them! What’s a Haul Video? For the better part of… Continue reading What’s Wrong with Haul Videos?
Shopping Support Buddies
A friend or family member is overshopping and this behavior is having serious negative consequences. Maybe you know what a deep financial hole this person has gotten into. Maybe you see the negative effect this behavior is having on important relationships or on the person’s work life or mental health. What can a friend or… Continue reading Shopping Support Buddies
The Curious Case of Parkinson’s Medication and Compulsive Behavior
A study in the recent Archives of Neurology documents the connection between certain Parkinson’s disease medications and a significant increase in the likelihood of an impulse-control disorder: buying, gambling, eating, or sex. The drugs at issue are dopamine-agonists, a class of pharmaceuticals that ease the difficult and frustrating motor symptoms associated with Parkinson’s. But patients… Continue reading The Curious Case of Parkinson’s Medication and Compulsive Behavior
Compulsive Returners
A sometimes unrecognized (or unacknowledged) form of overshopping is compulsive returning. Here, the overshopper regularly attempts to undo her habit by taking impulsive purchases back to the store for a refund. This, however, is an extension of the problem rather than a solution to it. The compulsive returner fails to understand that in shopping, as… Continue reading Compulsive Returners
Shoptimism
Lee Eisenberg’s Shoptimism is a journey into the psychology of shopping from two sides of the cash register, the buy side and the sell side. It could easily be the upbeat textbook for Retail 101, exploring in its first half the buy side—why we consumers shop—and in its second half the sell side, how different… Continue reading Shoptimism
Money Buys Unhappiness
In a new study, published in the current issue of Psychological Science, Jordi Quoidbach and three colleagues demonstrate that money—even the thought of it—undermines life’s simple pleasures. Specifically, the authors found that wealthier people were less able than poorer ones to savor, to enhance and prolong positive emotional feelings such as joy, awe, excitement, contentment,… Continue reading Money Buys Unhappiness