How Stress Impacts Your Spending Choices

An experienced consumer researcher and professor of marketing, Juliano Laran has earned listing as one of the most productive authors from the American Marketing Association. As part of his research portfolio, Juliano Laran published a study titled The Effect of Stress on Consumer Saving and Spending in collaboration with Kristina Durante of Rutgers University, .

Stress impacts how you choose to spend your money. Although stressed consumers generally decrease their spending, preferring to save money, they actually increase spending on items considered necessities.

Physiologically speaking, stressful situations activate the hormone cortisol, preparing you to face potential dangers. In the face of threats, either real or perceived, we enter survival mode and try to obtain control. Thus, we have cognitive processes designed to deal with stress in times when we cannot handle the demands of our immediate environment.

That desire for control not only drives your ability to function, but also directs how you spend money. Thus, if stressful life conditions cause you to feel powerless, you might seek to regain control by increasing your purchases of items you consider necessary.