Researchers at MIT Sloan’s Neuroeconomics Laboratory are looking at brain activity to help understand what ifluences people’s decisions to spend money, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
The Athinoula A. Martinos Imaging Center is scanning people’s brains as they make real decisions involving money, hoping to test traditional assumptions about consumer spending.
Recent research using brain scanning found that when making personal financial decisions online, subjects were more likely to trust bank representatives whose faces resembled their own.
Prelec and colleagues also have used brain scanning to understand how people feel about payment and personal finances, revealing that brain structures associated with pain were activated when subjects saw a high price appear next to a product they were considering purchasing. This could help explain why consumers favor purchasing arrangements that disguise the payment transactions, such as subscriptions, or why people seem more willing to pay a higher price when paying with credit rather than with cash. It may literally feel less painful.
Source: MIT Sloan
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