How We’re Wired to Keep On Buying
This model is part of a small series which dives deeper into the root causes of why we over spend on non essential goods and services. The aim is to provide a series of frameworks that make it easy to identify when you're over spending and why you're doing it.
We've established that overspending often starts with a deep human insecurity to require respect and approval from others, forcing us to buy things that improve our social status and approval, rather than providing personal benefit. However, once there is an understanding that the status game brings very little benefit, we can still find ourselves craving the need for specific, non essential products, even if they're not for the benefit of flexing to our peers.
This reveals that buying for external social status needs is only one part of the reason that we love non-essential buying, showing that external factors aren't the only factor that influences our decision making. We also need to be aware of the internal factors that drive us to want more, when we may not need any more.
What we choose to buy is mostly driven by emotion
We've all had the urge. You see something that looks great, has a seemingly cool feature, or has the potential to deliver an unworldly experience. It's human to feel these urges and wants that don’t seem to bring any rational benefits, and it's what so often causes us to buy on a whim. As much as we don't want to believe it, we're designed as irrational, impulse led creatures that are highly influenced by emotional whims, rather than acting purely on rationale.
We think these spur of the moment purchases will inject us with pleasure, yet, it seems that whatever we buy, the 'high' of buying the product wears off almost as quickly as the decision we made to buy it in the first place, sending us straight back to square one.
Emotion is driven by a chase for more dopamine
This high feeling is rush of dopamine, a chemical hormone we generate when we receive a reward. The problem with constantly chasing more dopamine highs, is that the requirement to meet or exceed the previous high is more than what was needed to hit the same level last time, making it a never ending cycle of chasing the magic dragon.
This constant need for an increase of dopamine makes it harder and harder to feel satisfaction from what we buy.
An increasing dopamine baseline is hard to reverse
Compounding this, once you've created the new, higher baseline for reward after buying a product, you struggle to go back towards a lesser version of the same thing. The only way to get the high is to keep going towards the newer, version to increase your happiness.
It’s critical to reverse or slow dopamine requirements
Our failed ability to recognise these continuous, increasing dopamine baselines is critical to why we fall into an obsessive cycle of buying. The awareness, and then control of our own buying habits come from seeing that our mental wellbeing doesn’t seem to improve as we buy more things. In fact, our wellbeing may even decline with an ever increasing dopamine baseline that seems forever out of reach.
“I love to go and see all the things I am happy without.”
- Socrates
"It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor."
- Seneca
Key takeouts from how we’re wired to keep buying:
The more we get, the more we want:The problem with creating these ever increasing dopamine baselines, is that we trap ourselves into forever wanting more, without recognising that it's even happening. We're constantly fooled every time we get the craving for a new product as we're desparately trying to meet the same high we had last time.
Life is better at the minimum: Chasing the rush will hurt in the long run. Once you realise that hardly anything material can bring sustainable happiness, you'll understand the need to actually WANT for far less. Resistance to the temptation if buying can be a superpower.
Start simple, and stay simple: If you keep your needs baseline simple and at a minimum, then you'll never have anywhere to come back down from, as often coming back down is far more difficult the further along you go.