Something You Should Know - Why Too Much Pleasure Makes You Miserable & Strategies to Achieve Financial Wellbeing

Episode Date: September 2, 2021

You already know how important a good night’s sleep is. But how much is enough? This episode begins with some startling information about how just 15 minutes more sleep per night can make a big difference. https://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/162769 We all want pleasure in life. In fact, most of us have a lot of pleasure. Maybe too much pleasure. And all that pleasure can make you miserable according to Dr. Anna Lembke. She is a psychiatrist and medical director of the Stanford Addiction Medicine and author of the bestselling book Dopamine Nation (https://amzn.to/3BahOhY). Listen as she explains how humans are not designed to have unending pleasure whether it’s technology or food or anything else. She has some interesting thoughts about why this is such a problem and how we can best deal with all this pleasure. What if credit cards were called “loan cards” instead? Chances are you wouldn’t use them as freely according to Eesha Sharma a marketing professor at San Diego State University. Eesha’s research revolves around financial wellbeing and how people react to perceived scarcity and deprivation. Her research as appeared in top journals and publications. Listen as she offers some great insight into how we think about and use money that I think will surprise you. Eesha’s Twitter handle is @EeshaSharma. Most parents feel good if their kids watch “educational” TV or video programs. Yet one study found something that parents might find a little disturbing. In fact it was so disturbing that some of the researchers changed their kids’ viewing habits after seeing the results. Listen as I explain. Source: Po Bronson author of Nurture Shock (https://amzn.to/3mGwu4h).  PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! We really enjoy The Jordan Harbinger Show and we think you will as well! Check out https://jordanharbinger.com/start OR search for The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.  T-Mobile for Business the leader in 5G, #1 in customer satisfaction, and a partner who includes benefits like 5G in every plan. Visit https://T-Mobile.com/business JUSTWORKS makes it easier for you to start, run and grow a business. Find out how by going to https://justworks.com For more information on fire safety products, safety tips and educational activities you can do at home with your family visit https://firstalert.com/firepreventionmonth   https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! Visit https://www.remymartin.com/en-us/ to learn more about their exceptional spirits! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Today on Something You Should Know, how could just 15 more minutes of sleep a night make a huge difference in your life? Then, too much pleasure can make you miserable. And all of us probably have too much pleasure. Most of us have some kind of minor addiction. I mean I could ask you is there not some behavior in your life that you engage in more than you would

like or in a way that you would prefer not? Plus educational television can be good for kids but there is one problem. And how you save, spend, and think about money. Credit cards, for instance. Regardless of whether you use your credit card and pay it off, it's still essentially a loan. But we don't call them loan cards. Simply calling a credit card a loan card decreases people's willingness to use it for discretionary expenditures. All this today on Something You Should Know. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking

to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology.

That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice

you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hello. Welcome to Something You Should Know. I know you've heard this all your life, that you need to get a good night's sleep, that sleep is very important. And we've talked about it. We've had guests on this podcast talking about how important your sleep is. Well, here's some interesting evidence that backs up what everybody's been saying. A study of over 7,000 high school students showed that A students averaged 15 more minutes of sleep per night than B students. B students averaged 15 more minutes of sleep per night than C students.

C students averaged 15 more minutes a night than D students. Amazingly, just 15 minutes more sleep a night can really make a difference. Now, Americans average 6.7 hours of sleep per night. Most people need more than that to function at their best. Why are we getting less sleep? Well, it does appear that the answer is pretty obvious. There are just too many things to distract us from sleeping, like television, the internet, cell phones,

and a lot of other things that keep us up at night. So we sleep less. But we shouldn't. And that is something you should know. How could it be that having lots of good things in your life, lots of pleasure and not a lot of pain, how could that be bad for you? Could it be that we aren't really wired to have so much pleasure and that we need to balance it out?

I mean, you sometimes hear people say, for example, that kids today have it too good. Well, can you really have it too good? Could having it too good actually make you miserable? Well, the answer is yes, according to Anna Lemke. Anna is a psychiatrist. She is medical director of Stanford Addiction Medicine and program director for the Stanford Addiction Medicine Fellowship. She is also author of a book called Dopamine Nation,

Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence. Hi, Anna. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, thanks for having me. So explain why having too much pleasure can be a bad thing. I mean, what is the problem with that? Yeah, the problem is that we have created a world of overwhelming abundance where we have almost infinite access to high pleasure goods, but our brains were not evolved for this world. Our brains were evolved for a world of scarcity. And the problem is that because of this mismatch between our primitive brains and the world that we live in now, we've all become more unhappy, more anxious, more depressed. Rates of depression and anxiety are going up all over the world, but especially in rich nations

and especially among young people. And I contend that the reason for that is not because necessarily the prime driver being social inequality or trauma or social dislocation, but rather that the prime driver is that we're inundated with dopamine. Well, you would think if we were programmed for scarcity and now we don't have to really worry too much about that, that we have all these wonderful things, you would think that'd be a pretty good thing, that life is easy and so on we go. You would think so, except that our brains are not adapted to a world of infinite pleasures. And the result is that we're actually more unhappy. And the reason for that is because as our brains try to compensate for all of this rewarding stuff that we're ingesting and we're doing, it's doing that

through something called the opponent process mechanism. It's actually down-regulating our own pleasure neurotransmitters. So we're essentially inducing clinical depression because we're over-ingesting all of these pleasure goods. So it's like your body doesn't want too much pleasure, which seems weird to me. You would think it would like lots of pleasure. I like pleasure, but your body is trying to regulate it. The way that I explain this to my patients and to my medical students is imagine that in your brain, there's a balance.

And when you experience pleasure, the balance tips one way. And when you experience pain, the balance tips in the opposite direction. So what happens when, for example, I eat a piece of chocolate, I get a little tip to the side of pleasure and I get a release of dopamine, my pleasure neurotransmitter in my brain's reward

pathway. One of the overarching rules governing this balance is that it wants to remain level. It doesn't want to be tipped very long to the side of pleasure or pain. So the brain will kick in with its own re-regulating mechanisms to bring the balance level again. And the way that it does that is by tipping it an equal and opposite amount to the side of pain. I imagine that as these little gremlins, let's call them neuroadaptation gremlins, that hop on the pain side of my balance. That's that moment of wanting a second piece of chocolate.

Now, if I wait long enough, the gremlins hop off and a balance is restored or what neuroscientists call homeostasis. But imagine if I don't wait, imagine if I eat another piece of chocolate and another and another, and now I've eaten the whole box. I end up then with a whole bunch of gremlins on the pain side of my balance and they like it there and they don't want to get off. So that means that if I do that over many, many days to weeks, I essentially reset my brain to the side of pain. Well, isn't this like what we hear about addicts, that a drug addict has to take more drugs just to feel the same? Exactly. Then I need to keep eating chocolate, not to feel good, but just to feel normal, right? And I need more and more potent forms of that chocolate because the chocolate that I was

eating, you know, eventually I can't win with the gremlins. They'll overpower me. So it's a really insidious phenomenon where nothing else is interesting except for my chocolate. And after a while, even the chocolate doesn't work. I just need to keep eating it so that I'm not tilted to the side of pain. Okay, but that sounds like addiction to me. And you're a psychiatrist and you deal in, you specialize in addiction,

but a lot of us aren't addicted to chocolate. We're not addicted to anything. Of course, that's very true. But you don't need to be addicted in order to suffer the negative consequences of dopamine deficit. And I guess I would challenge you a little bit. And I would say that I think in this day and age, we all, most of us have some kind of minor addiction. I mean, I could ask you, is there not some behavior in your life that you engage in more than you would like, or in a way that you would prefer not? And I would argue that because addiction is a spectrum

disorder and because it's engaging those same motivational pathways that get hijacked in the disease of addiction, I would argue that in fact, we are all a little bit addicted today. Yeah. Okay. I suggest that whatever that thing is for you, you try abstaining from it for a period of time and see how hard it is and see whether or not you experience the universal symptoms of withdrawal, which are anxiety, irritability, insomnia, depression, and craving, even just a a little bit and also what that period of abstinence allows is that we can kind of look back and then see the true impact of our use because when we're in it we often don't see it okay well i'll let people who listen to this decide if they

feel like they're addicted but sometimes i just worry that like when you talk to someone like you it's like you know the saying to a, everything's a nail. And I worry that sometimes that everybody's addicted. Well, no, I'm not sure I buy that. Uh-huh. Yeah. And I appreciate you, you know, you pushing back on that and challenging that. And I'm not saying that everybody's addicted, but I'm saying if you are unhappy in your life and you are ingesting on a regular basis, a highly reinforcing, potentially addictive substance or behavior, you might consider that substance or that behavior as the possible cause of why you're not feeling good. And the reason that that is a radical suggestion is because we generally think that we are engaging in these recreational activities or

recreational drug use in order to feel good or to solve a problem. And in the short term, it feels like it works, but with repeated use, it can actually turn on us and be the cause of the problem. So yes, I agree with you. Not everybody is addicted, but it's also true that it's really hard to see it as it's happening. In the book, I talk about, for example, my own minor addiction to romance novels. And it certainly started out as a completely harmless recreation, but it very quickly escalated over time where I was losing sleep, staying up late at night, being tired the next day, not able to really engage in my work the way that I want to. We would have family gatherings and I would want and go to my room to read novels instead of being present and enjoying

being with my family. Over time, I needed more potent forms of those romance novels to get the same effect. I found myself reading Fifty Shades of Grey in the middle of the night. Anna, oh my God. Control yourself. So my point is, as it was happening, it was a really slippery slope. I genuinely didn't really think anything of it. I just thought, oh, you know, I work hard. I need a break. No big deal.

But, you know, by the time I was bringing these romance novels to work and reading in between patients, I actually really think I had a problem. Now, it's nothing compared to people with severe addictions and severe life-threatening addictions, but it's on the spectrum. It's using those same brain pathways, and it was impacting my life. And I did want to make a change when I saw it for what it was. But here I am, an addiction specialist, and I didn't see it until I was pretty far along. And so what's the solution? If too much pleasure is the problem, then do we need to have more pain? Well, yes, that's exactly what I recommend in the book. And that's why it's so counterculture. You know, first of all, if we do engage in some highly rewarding,

reinforcing activity on a daily basis, we probably have become to some degree physiologically and psychologically dependent on it. So when we stop doing that for a period of time, that alone is painful. Why? Because again, we tip the balance to the side of pain, we're in withdrawal. So the first thing to do is to just like tolerate that pain. So when it comes to, for example, putting your smartphone away, you know, withdrawal will be experienced as intrusive thoughts of all of the things I'm missing out on because I'm not checking my phone. And it might not even be good things. It might be all the bad things that I'm not keeping track of that I need to for my job or for my kids. When in fact, that's really illusory. We don't need to be that available and that attached. And so we have to tolerate those thoughts, not act on them, but just tolerate them

until, you know, the withdrawal subsides, the gremlins hop off, homeostasis is restored, and we're feeling better again. But we can even go further than that by pushing on the pain side, which is why I always prescribe things like exercise because exercise helps withdrawal and ultimately repeatedly doing things that are hard and challenging like exercising or other, you know, challenging intellectual or creative activities because they're effortful ultimately, you know, reset our pleasure pain pathway to the side of pleasure because it's an adaptive source of dopamine because it comes not directly from the activity, but from the activity's after effects. So how much is enough?

I mean, so your example of like your romance novels,, where's the line? When you're reading romance novels in between patients, okay, maybe that's the line. But where is the line? And then when you hit the line, you probably can't even tell you've hit the line. And then how much pain do you put back in your life to balance out that much? Is it equal 50-50? Well, I mean, the prescription is pain. I mean, that's why it's a, you know, it's a hard sell because essentially what I ask

my patients, my patients come in, they're anxious, they're depressed. They want help with that. And I say, hey, I have a great idea for you. I'm going to do, I'm going to recommend something that's going to make you more anxious and depressed. But the whole idea is that they have to do something really hard in the short term in order to feel better in the long term. Sometimes I use the metaphor of chemotherapy,

like patients with cancer have to engage in this really painful treatment in order to cure their cancer. This is a similar thing. You have to be willing to tolerate some degree of discomfort and outright pain in order to feel better in the long run. I'd love to get you to give me an example, maybe from your own work, as to how this very specifically works. But first, I'm speaking with Dr. Anna Lembke,

and the name of her book is Dopamine Nation. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword

fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go Network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest.

Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control

not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Ana, can you give me like a real life example of how this idea of inserting more pain

into your life balances out the pleasure so life gets good again. A patient of mine, a young man in his early 20s, came to see me for debilitating depression and anxiety, and he was also somewhat suicidal. And 20 years ago, the first thing I would have done for a kid like this would have been to prescribe him an antidepressant and recommend psychotherapy. Instead, what I said is don't play any video games for the next month. He was playing video games 24-7 late into every night. And that's completely counterintuitive. But what I had hypothesized and which turned out to be true was that the reason that he was anxious and depressed was because his brain was so inundated and overstimulated with

this highly rewarding behavior of playing video games that his brain had attempted to compensate by down-regulating his own dopamine and his own dopamine receptors, which meant that he constantly needed more video games and more rewarding video games to get the same effect. And when he wasn't playing video games, he was in a dopamine deficit state, which is essentially the same as clinical depression. So he abstained for a month from video games, which was really a leap of faith for him. And I applaud him for doing that. And what happened was initially he felt more anxious and more depressed, which I warned him that he would. Why? Because he was in a dopamine deficit state. His own brain had downregulated production of his own dopamine because he was getting norepinephrine and his own serotonin, all those feel good chemicals that the brain can make as long as you're not taking too much of that from

the outside. And he came back four weeks later and he felt better than he had in many years, less depressed, less anxious. I mean, I've seen this so many times and it's so counterintuitive. When you're in it, you don't see it. But once you take a break from ingesting all these high rewards, the brain recalibrates and people essentially feel better because they're not constantly fighting the gremlins of homeostasis.

It is interesting that with technology in particular, but with everything, I guess, that when you suggest to people that they're doing it too much, there's always a reason why. There's always a yes, but. That's exactly what people who try to quit cigarettes, who try to quit alcohol, any drug, you name it, the brain will produce all kinds of rationalizations for why you must do that drug right now. That's exactly what it is. So I think first, conceptually understanding that you've got a pleasure pain balance tip to the side of pain, that you're in withdrawal, that that's craving. And if you just wait, if you just wait, those thoughts will begin to subside. That's what's so kind of incredible about it and how we think we're freely choosing to engage on our smartphones,

but we're really the slaves of our smartphones. But if with a period of absence, if you can put it away, even just for one single day, as you get to the end of that day, you will probably experience like a sense of opening up and a sense of freedom and that not every thought is preoccupied. I just, I just heard from a patient of mine today, a longstanding patient with a terrible sex addiction who said, you know, three years ago, 95% of his waking hour hours, he was preoccupied with using pornography. Now he hardly thinks about it. He has changed his brain and he's effectively done that by abstaining. Now the problem with smartphones is in this day and age, you really just can't not use them because everybody's using them and most professionals

need to use them. But if you abstain for long enough to reset your reward pathways and you really see how you've been using it and how crazy it is in a way, then you can go back to using it with self-binding strategies or barriers that help moderate use. It's interesting that you say this just because I have found that if I take the weekend off and turn my phone off you know the first day it's a little geez i really should check but by the second day man i'm loving it i am loving the fact that i'm not checking it and and also that's like like sometimes after a meal you know where you kind of crave that dessert you see other people oh god that cake looks good but God, that cake looks good. And it's a strong

craving. But if you abstain, in a half an hour, it's gone. And you didn't have the cake. And you don't feel any better or worse. I mean, the net result is the same. You're fine. Yes, that's exactly right. I'm really glad you've had that experience because that's exactly what I'm talking about. And that's what I mean by minor compulsions or minor addictions. You're obviously not addicted to your phone in any kind of serious way because if you were, two days of abstaining on the weekend would not be sufficient. But it gives you a tiny little window into what it might be like to be severely addicted to something because it's a very similar type of trajectory. It's just much

more severe and it lasts much longer for people who are severely addicted. You know what I wonder is because every generation you hear that, you know, kids today, they're doomed. If we were to go back in a DeLorean, back to 1940, would we see the same problem with just different pleasures? Or is there something fundamentally different about today? Fundamentally different. And it is technology, which has made all of these pleasurable substances more ubiquitous, more accessible, more potent, and constantly novel. So if we're going to do the time travel experiment here, what I would suggest is that 50 years from now, we will look back at the way we use these devices today and the way that we let our kids use these devices, the same way that we look back at the way that doctors smoked cigarettes in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. We will

be horrified. We will say, I cannot believe we did that. So it almost sounds as if you're saying that really that the problem now is that today it's all reward that nobody has to work for and that that's the imbalance is that suicidal. I mean, it's really tragic. And it's not just young people, it's all of us, you know, we're all sort of, you know, sort of in this like this constant state of unhappiness and restlessness, and we can't figure out why. So then on top of it, we feel guilty. Because it's like, well, you know, I have a house, I have all the food I could eat, you know, I may even have like, you know, everything that on paper you would want to have, you know, wonderful partner, great kids. And yet, you know, I'm not that happy. And I think a big contributor to it is the way that we're inundated with these pleasure goods.

Well, this is obviously a problem that affects a lot of people and that a lot of people are concerned about, as evidenced by the fact that your book is a huge bestseller. And I think it's really interesting that your prescription to all of this pleasure in our lives is to insert a little pain, but as you point out, it's all about balance. That is Dr. Anna Lembke. She's medical director of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Program and director for the Stanford Addiction Medicine Fellowship. And the name of her book is Dopamine Nation. There's a link to that book in the show notes.

Thank you so much, Anna. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to talk to you today. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong? And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture.

Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games,

and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. All day long, you're making financial decisions. Some important ones, some not so important. But money seems to work its way into many, if not most, of the decisions we make. And how you feel about money affects those decisions.

Some people like to spend money. Some people like to save money. And so understanding how you feel about money is really important, and it's why Isha Sharma is here. Isha is a researcher, and her research revolves around consumer and financial well-being. She is particularly interested in how people react to perceived scarcity, poverty, and financial well-being. She is particularly interested in how people react to perceived scarcity, poverty, and deprivation. Her work has appeared in top journals and

publications, and she is here to help you better understand how you feel about money. Hi, Isha. Welcome. Hi. Thank you for having me. So let's start with what you think is the biggest or one of the biggest issues people have with their money. So I think a lot of times, one of the biggest trade-offs that people face is a trade-off between saving and spending. So some individuals really get a lot of enjoyment from saving their money, and other individuals get a lot of enjoyment from saving their money and other individuals get a lot of enjoyment from spending their money. But in general, I think people agree that saving is something that is a prudent thing to do, but it can be very hard to do that because oftentimes when you are saving money, it almost feels like you're denying yourself. It feels like you're giving something up. And that's not very pleasurable.

So that can sometimes stand in the way. But there are some tricks that you can use to sort of help yourself overcome that if saving is something that is one of your goals. And those tricks are? One of the things is that when people think about how to improve their financial situation, oftentimes they are much more focused on opportunities to earn money, to increase their inflows, and they're not as frequently thinking about ways to save. And this may not be a bad thing, but with this focus, people may overlook that when you're pursuing opportunities to earn, those opportunities

oftentimes come with costs as well. So you can imagine maybe you got an additional job opportunity, but you have to travel more for it, or you need to buy new clothing to be appropriate for that job. So you're incurring costs while you're pursuing this opportunity. On the other hand, there are opportunities to save that don't always require you to cut back on your desired consumption. For example, I was moving across the country this year and I had a cable bill that was just continuing to be paid automatically. I could have stopped that payment a lot earlier and saved myself money. I wouldn't have been denying myself any consumption, but those types of things don't automatically come

to mind. So I would say, one, just be aware that opportunities to earn sometimes come with hidden costs and opportunities to save don't always come with those costs. And there are a few other tips that we can talk about too. One is reward yourself for saving. If there's something that you've been looking forward to doing and you end up being able to do that, reward yourself so that it feels more pleasurable. So those are a couple of things, being aware of some of the psychological factors going on in your mind, and then also trying to figure out ways to make saving pleasurable, whether it's connecting it to a certain reward or maybe breaking a bigger savings

goal into smaller, more manageable goals that make you feel like you are actually making progress towards your savings goals. Well, and people are sometimes labeled as, oh, he's a spender, he's a saver. And you wonder where those attitudes come from. Why are some people saving? And a lot of people say that they get that sense of security knowing they've got money in the bank and that that feels good and that without that, life's a little scary. There are many different individual factors that can play into people's decisions to spend and save. One is whether they get more enjoyment from saving versus spending.

This is called tightwad or spendthrift tendencies. But people also vary in other ways, such as their propensity to plan. Some people have more of a shorter-term orientation plan. Some people have more of a shorter-term orientation, and some people have more of a longer-term orientation. People also vary in their goals. So sometimes people are more focused on nearer-term day-to-day types of things or things in the future, like planning for a wedding or buying a home or preparing for a child. So a lot of different factors, both in your personality and in the situations that you're in, can shape how you respond to saving and spending. I know in my own life, and I imagine other people have had this experience, I've had money and I've had times in my life when I haven't had money. And depending on whether I did or I didn't would really affect my mood and how I thought about life and what I spent my money on and how much I enjoyed things.

And what about that? There are some effects of feeling as though your resources aren't enough. And one of them is we tend to focus more on earning rather than saving, but this is especially the case when you feel your resources are restricted. In addition, when you feel your resources are restricted, you don't get as much enjoyment from your spending as you anticipate. So oftentimes we spend with the goal of trying to make ourselves feel better about something. We often hear the term retail therapy. And when you feel that you don't have enough money, it exaggerates this. So people who feel financially constrained may be more inclined to spend to compensate for the aversiveness of feeling financially constrained.

But my co-authors and I have actually shown that you're less happy with your purchases when you feel financially constrained. So some of the implications of this is if you feel that you don't have enough money, you might want to be aware that you might have a tendency to spend, but you may not be as happy with this. But it's not all doom and gloom because it turns out that if you plan out your purchases, you end up being happier with what you've spent on. So I think the takeaway is to try to plan early and often for the expenditures that you would like to make now, as well as the expenditures that you would like to make in the future.

There are people who always search for the bargain, and then there are people who couldn't care less. And I wonder what the difference is. Why do some people clip coupons and always look for the sales and the other people buy what they want to buy when they want to buy it and they're not clipping coupons and looking for sales? I love that question. And it's one that I've been interested in for a long time. And I think one obvious difference might be the level of people's resources. So sometimes you

might be more forced to look for deals when you are on a limited budget. But there are people who are more deal prone. They are very excited by getting something on a deal. It feels like a win. It feels like they are financially savvy. But on the other hand, some individuals can experience a sense of embarrassment or shame if they are clipping coupons or looking for things on a discount. So this is in part a personality variable that is different across individuals, whether you're more deal-seeking and you get more enjoyment, or if it sometimes feels like a signal to other people or to yourself that, oh, maybe I couldn't make this purchase if I didn't get it on a discount. So a lot of the times it's some of the attributions or stories or inferences that people tell themselves about

these behaviors. I know people that, you know, they'll buy something because it's 70% off. And it's that I couldn't, I had no, I had to buy it because I couldn't afford not to buy it. How do you not buy something that's 70% off? And then I would say, well, are you going to ever wear that or use that? It's not an issue. It was 70% off. Yeah. So what you're talking about is some individuals will anchor on the total amount that you're spending and others use this reference point. It used to be 200 and now it's 100. I really ought to take advantage of this opportunity. It really feels like this scarce opportunity. You have to take advantage of it.

Oftentimes, retailers will show you original prices or they'll make the amount off really visible so that it feels like you've got to take advantage of this deal and it's really exciting and you feel a lot of positive feelings because you're taking advantage of this opportunity, I think one thing that isn't always obvious is that some of these discounts might be built in. And so when we think about the joy that we get from saving money, we should also be keeping in mind, well, can I afford this purchase?

And does it still fit in with my budget? Because it may not be actually as scarce of an opportunity, but that varies by situation. Talk about, because I know this is one of your areas of interest, scarcity. And what I'm thinking, when I think about scarcity in retail, I think about how, for example, McDonald's has the McRib and then it takes the McRib away and then it brings it back and it makes it so appealing to people because it's only available for a short time. Or when Taco Bell has their nacho fries and then they disappear and then, well, man, where's the nacho fries? So how does scarcity affect people? So we know that scarcity enhances the desirability of virtually anything that can be consumed. So when something has been gone and it's come back, there's this sense of novelty, but there's also a sense that it might be removed again.

So I've got to get it while it's here. If it's here for a limited amount of time or it's here in a limited quantity, it really increases the sense of value. And so people feel as though they're doing better. And especially when you feel financially constrained or you feel in particular, other people have more resources than I have. Getting something that might be less available to the general public might make you feel especially that you're winning.

Borrowing money is something everybody has to do, I think, at some point in their life, whether they're buying a house or a car or they need money to pay the bills or they want to go on a vacation, they borrow money. And there's some real interesting psychology that you've studied about that. Anytime you borrow money, you're using money that doesn't really belong to you. It's money that is temporarily being given to you for your use by another entity. But what I've seen is that consumers actually feel as though borrowed money is their own money. And this varies from person to person. So some people feel more like borrowed money is like their own money, like cash in their pocket than others. And what I think is really fascinating about this is this feeling of ownership over borrowed money, which we call the psychological ownership of borrowed money, actually varies

across debt types with people feeling more that money in the form of a credit card is more their own than money in the form of a loan. So even if it is the exact same terms, the exact same product, but it's called flex credit rather than flex loan. People feel like those funds are more like their own and they're more willing to spend it. And I think this is really valuable for consumers to know, given that credit card expenditures are a pretty high category of consumer debt. And it has been shown that your discretionary spending, spending on extras, is actually the largest category of credit card spending. And interest rates on credit cards tend to be higher than interest rates on other forms of borrowing. So I think this is something that consumers

ought to be aware of and think about as they are swiping their credit card for different purchases. Yeah, think about that. I mean, there is this sense that with a credit card, it's your credit. You've earned the right to use that money really as if it's your money. And at a cost, if you pay interest on your credit cards, at a cost more than if you borrowed that money in the form of a bank loan. And actually, regardless of whether you use your credit card and pay it off or you carry a balance, it's still essentially a loan. But we don't call them loan cards. We call them credit cards. And I suspect that if we called them loan cards, people would actually be less excited about

using them. And my co-authors and I actually have some evidence of this. Which is? That simply calling a credit card a loan card decreases people's willingness to use it for discretionary expenditures. So I'm not sure whether banks and financial institutions know this, but I do know from friends who work at credit card companies that when they discuss providing credit to consumers, they're talking about loans. But a lot of the marketing and consumer facing materials really doesn't focus on the APR and the fees. It's talking about the benefits and it's talking about the credit and everything you can buy and the rewards. So we're in a time when there are more financing products available than ever. And most of the marketing material talks about all of the benefits of using these

cards. But especially for those who aren't repaying their cards, it could be useful to think about how your credit card is essentially a loan card and think about how the interest rates on these products will tend to be higher than if you were to, say, take out a personal loan. Talk about charitable giving. I know that's another area you've looked at it. And why is that interesting and important? What a lot of research has shown is that when people give to charity, they tend to give based on their emotions. They give to someone with a name and a place, someone who's identified. They give to people who they know. And that might be personally satisfying, but there are also ways that you might be able to give where you're not earmarking things or setting things aside for a specific purpose. And that permits charitable organizations to deploy their resources however they like and potentially more efficiently.

So the problem with that is that we tend to give based on our feelings. And if we have a charitable appeal that focuses on efficacy or how impactful something will be, sometimes it tends to dampen our feelings. And then it turns out that we will end up giving less. So in much of my research, I'm interested in how can we provide information with people or nudge them towards making more effective charitable giving decisions without making them care less and hence give less? Well, I've always felt somewhat reluctant to give to big, huge charities because it almost seems like what I could possibly give them is such a tiny drop in the bucket. It wouldn't make much difference. And how do I know what they're going to use it for? You can't see the results versus

giving to a local homeless shelter where you can actually see them helping people. So you're not alone in this. A lot of people feel that they want to know where the money is going. They want to feel that their donation is going to make a difference. If it's difficult to see that, it can change where people give or lead them to give not at all. And in some of the research that I've conducted, I've explored how to help people feel that they are indeed going to make a difference. And what I've seen is that if people feel like, hey, I've taken steps to accomplish goals that are important to me in the past, I feel like an efficacious person. It in turn makes them feel more that their donation is going to make a difference.

I suspect there are a lot of people who wish they could save more. And from your research, what seems to work? What makes it easier for people to actually sock money away? One of the things is automating your savings so you're not physically parting with your money and don't experience that pain of losing out. Another way to do it is by breaking down large, seemingly insurmountable savings goals into smaller, more manageable pieces. This not only makes the goal seem more manageable, but as you complete each smaller goal, you might have this feeling of goal progress that could encourage you to keep on going. A third way is to pair saving with something fun. So people refer to this as temptation bundling.

I'll be able to go have a milkshake or enjoy binge watching a TV show that I really enjoy if I've reached this one particular goal. And finally, I think being aware psychologically of the tendency when you think about improving your finances, that you might think more about opportunities to earn, which can come with costs, and you may not be as conscious about opportunities to save, which can not just come in the form of eliminating consumption, but also finding substitutes, perhaps seeking discounts, or even eliminating recurring expenditures that aren't actually serving you, like automatically renewing subscriptions that you're not actually doing anymore. And then a final component, I suppose, is also

being aware of your debt. So that also will contribute to your ability to save, keeping in mind that we are often more likely to borrow for experiential purchases than material purchases. And we may be more willing to borrow using credit cards, which can be more costly compared to other lower cost forms of borrowing, such as a personal loan. So keeping in mind these different things, how to make saving more rewarding, keeping in mind the costs associated with earning, and the role of debt in your life. Well, this is really interesting, particularly what you were saying about credit cards and how we think about credit cards differently than other loans, I think is really eye-opening. Isha Sharma has been my guest.

She is a researcher whose work revolves around consumer financial well-being. Her work has appeared in top journals and publications. She is a marketing professor at San Diego State University, and her Twitter handle is at Isha Sharma, if you would like to follow her on Twitter, and I'll put her Twitter handle in the show notes. Thank you, Isha. Parents often allow young children to watch educational TV shows on PBS or Nickelodeon or Disney,

and research shows there are some benefits to that. Kids can learn language and numbers and other useful things. But some years ago, a study was done of young children who watch educational TV, and the results were surprising. The more preschool children watched educational television and DVDs, the more they became bossy, controlling, and manipulative with other children, what's called relational aggression. The researchers theorize that many of these shows spend much of the time creating a conflict between characters and just a few minutes at the end resolving that conflict.

And young kids don't really grasp the overall lesson, they just learn the individual behaviors they see. The findings were so dramatic that several of the researchers immediately changed their own children's viewing habits. And that is something you should know. If you enjoyed this podcast, take a few moments and let the world know. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Five-star reviews are always appreciated.

I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro,

who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan.

Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple,

or wherever you get your podcasts.