If you're sad and shopping, watch your wallet: A new American study shows people's spending judgment goes out the window when they're feeling blue, especially if they're a bit self-absorbed.
Study participants who watched a sadness-inducing video clip offered to pay nearly four times as much to buy a water bottle than a group that watched an emotionally neutral clip.
Those in the sad group typically insisted the video's emotional content didn't affect their willingness to spend more - an incorrect assumption, said one of the study's co-authors.
The so-called "misery is not miserly" phenomenon is well-known to psychologists, advertisers and personal shoppers alike, and has been documented in a similar study in 2004.
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