No.4 消费心理

第四天:消费心理 Your friends' social media posts are making you spend more money, researchers say 研究人员称，朋友在社交媒体上发布的信息正让你花更多的钱 American families don't save money like they used to. Now, a team of American and Canadian economists have proposed a new explanation for the declining savings rate, one rooted in individual psychology. At its heart lies a simple observation: Personal spending is a lot more visible to others than not spending. Changes in the media landscape have made other people's spending more visible than ever. That, in turn, is making all of us spend even more—and save even less. 美国家庭现在不再像从前那样存钱了。现在，一个由美国和加拿大经济学家组成的团队对储蓄率下降提出了一个新的、根植于个人心理学的解释。其核心是个简单的发现：比起不消费，个人消费行为更加吸引眼球。随着媒体格局的变化，他人的消费行为受到了前所未有的关注。这就进一步促使我们花得更多，存得更少。 Humans are social creatures, and we have a tendency to evaluate our own standingin life relative to how our friends and neighbors are doing. We want to keep up with the Joneses, and stay ahead of the Smiths. Because of this, when we see other people spending money we have a tendency to believe that we can—or should—be spending, too. 人类是社会性动物，我们倾向于根据朋友和邻居的现状来评估自己的社会地位。我们互相攀比，不甘人后。因此，当我们看到别人花钱时，就常会认为自己也能花钱，或者，也应该花钱。 Fifty years ago, our frames of referencefor our spending habits were relatively small. Now we have social media. Facebook lets us stay in touch with our rich college classmates who always seem to be on vacation. We can create and share detailed logs of the stuff we consume at places like Yelp and TripAdvisor. 50 年前，我们消费习惯的参照系相对较小。现在有了社交媒体，我们可以用 Facebook和有钱的大学同学保持联系，他们看上去天天都在度假；也可以在 Yelp 和 TripAdvisor 等网站上发表帖子，详细记录我们所消费的商品和服务。 The net effect of this saturation of consumptive media is that we're bombarded every day with signals to consume, consume, consume. "People infer that low saving is a good idea," as the authors put it. 关于消费的媒体宣传铺天盖地，最终的结果就是，我们每天都在被“消费、消费、再消费”的心理暗示轰炸着。研究报告的作者们指出：“人们得出的结论是，存钱少是个好主意。” "To decide if you're overconsuming, make a special effort to notice when your friends do something that is frugal, such as having a staycation or holding on to their 15-year-old car," Hirshleifer, one of the authors said. "If you're going to compare yourself to others, try to make it realistic." 报告作者之一赫什莱弗说：“想判断自己是否在过度消费，可以特别留心朋友们精打细算的做法，比如宅在家里度假，或者一辆车开了 15 年还坚持不换。如果你要和别人比，起码要比得现实一点。”