On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me: A partridge in a pear tree and a room full of diamonds. On the first day of January, he sent me some Mine Apollo – because that was all we could afford. Yes, folks, let’s talk about the season of overspending before the retail industry ups its game. Before it uses all the psychological strategies in the book to trick our brains into buying more, more, and even more for Christmas. In fact, let’s take a closer look at some of those strategies, shall we?

The retail industry gets away with overcharging us for goods and services since we are dumb enough to believe that expensive means better. When people were given fake medicine in an experiment, those who were told that the pills were expensive felt their pain go away. Those who thought that they were getting cheap pills, you ask? They said that the pain remained – that’s how brainwashed we are. And we do it without even giving it much conscious thought. 

When we are served wine, we enjoy it more when told that it is expensive (regardless of how much it really costs!), researchers at Stanford and the California Institute of Technology found. We don’t just pretend to like it more – we actually do like it more, the research team proved through brain scans. The word expensive, it would seem, stimulates our brain’s pleasure and reward centres. Aren’t we a funny breed?

Another retail trick to watch out for this season is the tendency to refer to every product as a special deal, or special offer. Whenever the word ‘special’ is used, off goes our brains, it would seem. One study even showed that one in five shoppers are gullible enough to fall for so-called special offers, even when they were more expensive than the original price! 

The worst pitfall to avoid this Spend-mas, however, is this: Resist the temptation to spend too much time in shopping centres/streets. Research shows that even the sharpest among us aren’t strong enough to handle more than 40 minutes of shopping without starting to make ill-advised decisions. After 40 minutes, the majority of people start purchasing things that they had no intention of buying, a study from Bangor University showed. 

While all of this might seem trivial, it’s not – especially not in a country where a large number of low-income earners still struggle to make ends meet. The majority of us have unreasonable Christmas spending habits – some waste as much as 15% of their yearly income on this holiday, according to a Gallup poll. When reason finally kicks in, it’s too late. Roughly half of us (47%) end up regretting that we wasted so much of our hard-earned money on Christmas, a 2017 survey showed. Let us be wise before the event this time around, shall we?