2009年，阿里巴巴决定在当年的11月11日举办“淘宝商城促销日”，到2012年，“双十一”的销售额超过了美国的“网络星期一”（黑色星期五之后的星期一，海外规模最大的线上购物活动），成为全球最大的互联网购物节。从国外风靡的“黑色星期五”、“网络星期一”，再到国内层出不穷的各类消费大促，如果在此期间你总是忍不住想“剁手”，不用担心，更不必自责，你绝不是一个人。这些促销活动的背后，正是商家们为消费者精心设计的诱人陷阱。
卡瑟琳·詹森-博伊德（Cathrine Jansson-Boyd）是一位来自英国安格利亚鲁斯金大学（Anglia Ruskin University）的消费心理学教授，多年来她一直在研究不同的消费行为及其背后的原因与机制，尤其是那些尚未得到充分探讨的人类行为，比如与购物节相关的消费心理学。通过她的研究，你或许能找到保卫钱包的好办法。
促使人们作出消费决策的影响因素多样且复杂，有吸引力的产品包装与产品设计、与商品特性相结合的营销策略以及产品的实用性都可以成为让你决定购买某件物品的原因。除此之外，节假日的购物促销与折扣也会让人一秒“上头”，冲动买下自己可能并不需要的商品。
詹森-博伊德表示，几乎所有人都是价格敏感型消费者，在购物过程中首先会关注价格。因此，当你遇到自认为划算的商品时，就会特别兴奋，有一种肾上腺素飙升的感觉，这种感觉与大脑的神经活动密切相关。
一项发表于《神经元》（Neuron）的研究中，研究人员利用功能性磁共振成像扫描（ER-fMRI）观察了26名受试者的大脑活动，结果发现，面对令人兴奋的价格，大脑中一个名为的伏隔核的脑区会被激活，它负责处理愉悦感受，还会与神经递质多巴胺结合，触发大脑的奖励与幸福回路。加之多巴胺还能使人在决策时更冲动，消费者面对折扣时感到狂喜甚至直接下单的行为就不难理解了。
除了“一买解千愁”，人们还会因为害怕错过“千载难逢”的降价机会而对购物抱有更加积极兴奋的态度，毕竟“犹豫就会败北”。不幸的是，这些心理会让人们最终作出不明智的消费决定。
在特价促销活动中，商家们常常会围绕一种名为“错失恐惧症”（fear of missing out，FOMO，也称社群恐慌症）的焦虑心理构建营销策略，来抓住消费者的注意力，这种方法非常有效。
“优惠仅剩24小时”、“商品只剩最后3件”：这类信息会让人们产生“现在不抓住机会就完了”的感觉。这在线下零售环境中同样适用。当你看到一家店门前排起了长队，商场里某件商品被一群人抢购时，你会想“天哪我要错过了，大家都在抢，我也要抢一个”。这种堪称疯狂的购物行为，纯粹由兴奋和恐惧错过的情绪驱动，人们会为此全力以赴、来回拉扯，直到拿下为止。
不过近年来，人们对购物节的热衷正在减退。面对各大购物平台繁杂琐碎的优惠套路以及商家在购物节前欲抑先扬的调价，消费者开始怀疑，自己是否能在促销活动中享受到真正的优惠。市场营销人员不得不为此付出更多努力，发送更多预告促销活动的短信，比如“优先通知”“活动仅限接下来24小时”等。
事实上，与“狼来了”的故事不同，消费者并不傻，他们知道这些促销短信是市场部为了引诱人们下单设计出的把戏，但如果反复收到这些强调“活动仅限24小时”的消息，人们就会从一开始的置之不理，到犹豫不决，再到担忧错过，最后屈服于飙升的肾上腺素带来的错失恐惧感，在促销活动上线的时刻点击下单按钮，心甘情愿地被掏空钱包。
大脑是一个快乐至上的系统，如果任由多巴胺支配行动，它只会不断向你抛出“买买买”的蛊惑，但你须要知道，你的钱包可能承担不起，人们也不应该总是把钱浪费在并不真正需要的东西上。如果你意志不坚定，干脆就别去接收这些信息：远离促销期间的商场，屏蔽短信，关掉购物APP的消息提醒，叉掉直播间。尤其是在购物节预热期，买买买的人们会相互影响、相互刺激，你很难不被卷入那种无法抽身的狂热中。
购物节结束后，与拒绝剁手带来的遗憾相比，受“错失恐惧症”支配而买下许多商品的人不仅不会特别开心，反而更容易后悔。比如，当你告诉自己：“我不确定自己是否要买这个，但我决定不买，我觉得应该把钱存起来买其他更好的东西。”那你几乎不太可能后悔这个决定。但如果你买下了不确定自己是否真正想要的物品，则很可能会觉得自己在浪费钱。
詹森-博伊德发现，人们常常假设自己做出了正确的购物决策，认为买到的东西会让自己相当满意，商品到手后，高期望往往会带来更大的失望。这表明，我们购物时的心态在很大程度上会被营销影响，而非回应自己真正的需求。
这种追悔莫及的感受带来的影响比你想象的更为深远。它不仅会使人后悔自己的购买行为，面对那堆买下却用不上的商品和被浪费的钱而感到心痛不已；长此以往，它可能还让你觉得……[查看全文]
A Psychologist’s Tips for Avoiding Overconsumption
Rachel Feltman: It’s almost Thanksgiving, and you know what that means: it’s already been “Black Friday” for, like, a week. What used to be a post-turkey American shopping tradition has ballooned into a global phenomenon of November sales. If you’re feeling the urge to do some serious damage to your bank account this week, you’re definitely not alone—and you shouldn’t blame yourself; these sales are designed and marketed to send you into a shopping spiral.
For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. My guest today is Cathrine Jansson-Boyd, professor of consumer psychology at Anglia Ruskin University. She’s here to tell us all about the psychology behind Black Friday shopping and what we can do to protect ourselves and our wallets.
Thank you so much for joining us to chat today.
Cathrine Jansson-Boyd: Thank you for having me.
Feltman: So your expertise is in consumer psychology. Could you tell us a little bit about what kinds of questions you try to answer in your research?
Jansson-Boyd: So I’ve been really lucky, in terms of my research career, that I have been able to look at very many different approaches to consumer behaviors. And generally what I’m interested in is trying to tap into aspects of human behavior that really hasn’t been addressed before. And this encompasses tactile input, for an example—which, when I started my career a long time ago, we knew very little about—so how you can use touch to change people’s perception. So I have done quite a lot on that.
I have also looked at how to reduce energy consumption. That’s something that tends to be notoriously difficult to do because people often are not conscious of how they’re using energy. So that presents quite a lot of challenge.
And along very similar lines I’ve also been involved in trying to reduce food waste within people’s homes—again, often something that happens subconsciously; people don’t even know that they’re throwing away food. So I’ve looked at quite a lot of environmentally linked aspects of consumption, but I’ve also looked at more kind of pure commercialized elements such as: How do we make a tea box more appealing? What is it that’s gonna make someone buy that? How do you communicate a specific type of marketing message, depending on what it is you’re trying to sell?
I've also looked quite a lot [at] aesthetics—so looking at the design elements, what can we do to change people’s perception? How do we kind of make it congruent with their actual beliefs so that people see something and then think, “Wow, that’s very attractive,” because people tend to buy things because they’re attractive, but equally, actually, “This is a functionable thing”?
So, you know, if you’re buying a Hoover—or a vacuum cleaner, sorry—you tend to look at the aesthetics of it, and people go, “No, you don’t if you buy a vacuum cleaner,” but actually you do, very much so. But equally you need to show it’s a functionable thing, something that, actually, people need, so that you kind of create a congruent message.
So that’s some of the things that I’ve done. So it’s quite diverse, to be honest [laughs].
Feltman: Yeah, well, I could ask you a million different questions [laughs] about the things you just mentioned, but today we are gonna talk about holiday shopping and sales specifically. What is it about shopping sales and discounts that, like, really messes with our heads and, and impacts our behavior?
Jansson-Boyd: Well, so we’re conditioned, to start off with, to look at price. So that’s something that consumers are very much driven by, regardless of what it is that they’re purchasing. So because you are very much in tune with that, when you come across something that you think is a bargain, you tend to get quite excited. So there’s an adrenaline rush going through your system.
And we also know through [functional magnetic resonance imaging] scans—so when we’re looking at the brain—if you are quite excited about a price, the same part of the brain that deals with general pleasurable experiences is actually activated ...
Feltman: Oh, wow.
Jansson-Boyd: So, so that tells us, when we see something that’s got a really good price, not only do we experience the adrenaline rush, but we actually experience genuine pleasure. So you couple that with potential excitement or thinking, “Oh, you know, there’s a sale; that means if I don’t grab it now, I could be missing out,” makes people...[full transcript]
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