We all know buying something can be pretty satisfying. But we often have to weigh that satisfaction with the fact that we must to pay for it, which can sometimes be downright painful. A recent study suggests that this pleasure/pain battle is common in our brains when we buy things and explains why paying with a credit card is so much easier.
The study testing this hypothesis (as explained in this WebMD article by Miranda Hiti) involved giving 26 healthy young adults $20 to spend and then studying their brains with Functional MRI scans. When the students liked an item, a certain brain area called the nucleus accumbens was particularly active. But if they thought items were overpriced, another brain area (the insula) became more active and a third brain area (the mesial prefrontal cortex) became less active. Researchers concluded from the results that when people are deciding whether to buy something, their brain apparently weighs the pleasure of making the purchase against the pain of spending the money.
“The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the brain frames preference as a potential benefit and price as a potential cost,” the researchers write.
This could explain why paying with a credit card is so much easier for us — it delays or removes the “pain” associated with paying for something in our brains, even if we know that paying for that item over time will cost us more money in the long run. We choose the short-term benefit or pleasure for the potential long-term “pain.”
The Psychology of Satisfaction and Happiness 