Speaker 1: I'm t T and I'm Zakiah and this is Dope Labs.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore
Speaker 1: science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship.
Speaker 2: Are you doing Black Friday shopping this year or what?
Speaker 1: No, I'm doing Black Friday saving? Okay, in this economy,
Speaker 1: put those dollars back in your pocket. There's only two
Speaker 1: of them, but put them back. What about you?
Speaker 2: You know, it's been a long time since I participated
Speaker 2: in Black Friday. I usually like to do like the
Speaker 2: pre Black Friday sales that they like, you know, game
Speaker 2: you on where it's like, oh you get a sneak
Speaker 2: peek to our Black Friday sales. Those things get me
Speaker 2: every time. But this year, this economy, you know, we
Speaker 2: got to think a little bit smarter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It sounded like think it's smarter, but also maybe dipping
Speaker 1: your toe in the waters based on what you're just saying,
Speaker 1: tricking myself, you know, doing a bunch of girl math
Speaker 1: to say, oh, yeah, I didn't spend any money this
Speaker 1: Black Friday, right, this is how it was supposed to be.
Speaker 1: I needed this stuff. But you know what our minds
Speaker 1: are tricking us all the time. And people may think
Speaker 1: there's no science to Black Friday shopping and the deals,
Speaker 1: but there is now. I know a long time ago
Speaker 1: we knew that Amazon Prime Day was a bus and
Speaker 1: we gave up on that right. But for Black Friday,
Speaker 1: I still have questions. So let's jump into it.
Speaker 3: What do we know?
Speaker 2: I think we know that Black Friday is a very
Speaker 2: special holiday. Can I call it that?
Speaker 3: I think so.
Speaker 2: For a lot of folks, people are camping out. I
Speaker 2: don't know if they're still fist fighting, but I remember
Speaker 2: that they were fist fighting back in the day trying
Speaker 2: to get those flat screen TVs.
Speaker 1: I think the flat screen TV. If there was an
Speaker 1: ornament for America, that's it because it runs on capitalism
Speaker 1: and consumerism. Put a flat screen TV on your.
Speaker 3: Christmas treet this year.
Speaker 1: I know that Black Friday has often been an economic
Speaker 1: indicator or an indicator for what the shopping season is
Speaker 1: going to be, what people are willing to spend, And
Speaker 1: even as we've seen perse Strings Titan that over time,
Speaker 1: people still spend on this day. And we just had
Speaker 1: an episode where we talked about the economy, and so
Speaker 1: I'm wondering how you know, with this new influx of
Speaker 1: what doctor West was calling discouraged workers, so people who
Speaker 1: were you know, on the job market, but then you know,
Speaker 1: got tired of applying for jobs and so aren't applying anymore.
Speaker 2: How that will impact Black Friday sales? Are those people
Speaker 2: saving or are they feeling like, oh, let me spend
Speaker 2: during a time where there's more discounts. I don't know
Speaker 2: how that psychology works.
Speaker 1: I don't think I know the psychology of any of it,
Speaker 1: and I need help because I think I've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of the like Doorbusters and the lines you know,
Speaker 1: lining up in advance that's gone away, but there are
Speaker 1: digital substitutes for that, like where it says twenty three
Speaker 1: people have this in their car, and I'm like, I
Speaker 1: better hurry up and check out.
Speaker 3: Is that a thing? Is that real? Is something wrong
Speaker 3: with me?
Speaker 2: Every time there's something wrong with both of us.
Speaker 1: I think we have to get into it because it
Speaker 1: feels like it's a little bit of economics and psychology
Speaker 1: tied together.
Speaker 2: Mine all my money, money on my mind.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 1: For today's lab we're looking at Black Friday. And I
Speaker 1: know people sometimes think like, oh what I buy is
Speaker 1: my business and you know there's no science to it,
Speaker 1: but I don't think so we have to look at
Speaker 1: like free shipping and there's only three left, Like why.
Speaker 3: Do those things hijack our brains?
Speaker 1: And what's happening? Especially when I get an email that
Speaker 1: says I left something in my car? It works every time,
Speaker 1: it works every time. I'm like that poor little item
Speaker 1: I needed.
Speaker 3: So we're here to get some answers about that.
Speaker 4: My name is done. Really, I'm a professor of psychology
Speaker 4: and behavior economics at university, and I do research on
Speaker 4: human irusianality and just kind of to help us think
Speaker 4: about human irrationality. I think about what gets us to
Speaker 4: act in ways that we don't know and don't seem
Speaker 4: to be logical. Now, I don't mean that they are
Speaker 4: not logical, but they're not the standard logic.
Speaker 2: How people behave around spending really varies with a personal person.
Speaker 2: I know me as a key, are not spending the same,
Speaker 2: We're not spending the same. I'm fast and furious with it.
Speaker 2: My friends, she's cold and calculated. But what types of
Speaker 2: questions are you answering in your work? Like what can
Speaker 2: we learn from your work?
Speaker 4: I try to uncover what is the logic by which
Speaker 4: we work, and the logic is often interesting and curious
Speaker 4: and not consistent. So for example, you could say, why
Speaker 4: would we stand in line for forty five minutes to
Speaker 4: get a cone of Ben and Jerry's ice cream? That's
Speaker 4: what cost us to dollars. It doesn't make sense rationally,
Speaker 4: but when you think about the allure free and so on,
Speaker 4: you can understand what it is. So there's a logic
Speaker 4: to what we do as human beings, just that the
Speaker 4: logic is not the we calculate, we trade off, and
Speaker 4: we do we do the writing. So that's that's the
Speaker 4: kind of thing that I try to uncover.
Speaker 1: H So this is a study of the human mind
Speaker 1: and how it makes decisions.
Speaker 4: My metaphor for the human mind is that it's a
Speaker 4: vintage Swiss army knife. Two parts Swiss army knife and vintage.
Speaker 4: Let's start with the Swiss army knife part. The Swiss
Speaker 4: army knife is kind of okay in lots of things,
Speaker 4: but it's not really excellent in anything. It's greatness come
Speaker 4: from the fact that there's lots of tools that can
Speaker 4: do lots of different things, and our mind is a
Speaker 4: little bit like that too, not particularly excellent in anything,
Speaker 4: quite okay in lots of things, and we can carry
Speaker 4: it with us. It's a vintage Sweet Sarmon knife. And
Speaker 4: what I mean by that is that our set of
Speaker 4: tools in our mind to deal with the world evolved
Speaker 4: in a very different evolutionary period. We were roaming the savannah,
Speaker 4: we were dealing with hunting, we were dealing with lions.
Speaker 4: Money is a new invention. We were not evolutionary designed
Speaker 4: to deal with money. We don't have a detector in
Speaker 4: our brain to figure out money. We think about compound
Speaker 4: interest and so on. So when we come to deal
Speaker 4: with money, we have these ancient tools that are were
Speaker 4: never that good.
Speaker 1: I like the vintage Swiss army knife. Yes, metaphor, because
Speaker 1: we've talked about anxiety in today's world, like our brains
Speaker 1: are not caught up to a cell phone and to
Speaker 1: somebody texting you saying can we talk later? That feels
Speaker 1: like the snake, you know, it feels like the terror
Speaker 1: because we have these old systems. What are the consumer
Speaker 1: issues that you think are could be it root costs
Speaker 1: or brain but like what's affecting and hurting people the
Speaker 1: most right now?
Speaker 4: So you know, money is an amazing invention. It allows
Speaker 4: society to move forward in all kinds of unbelievable ways. Right,
Speaker 4: if we didn't have money, how society looks like. Right,
Speaker 4: money is amazing. But money requires that we think about
Speaker 4: opportunity costs. Money requires that we think about now versus later.
Speaker 4: Spending now is unbelievably emotional. It really holds us and
Speaker 4: we feel like something. We are not good at delaying rewards,
Speaker 4: so we end up overspending now, sometimes even taking debt.
Speaker 4: That brings us into the second problem, which is we're
Speaker 4: not really good at understanding compound interest. In all of
Speaker 4: the world, I would say the poverty trap is that
Speaker 4: low income individuals take a loan at a high interest
Speaker 4: rate and then it's very, very hard to escape. So
Speaker 4: those are kind of fundamental about money. They're not about
Speaker 4: shopping and so on, but they're fundamentally about money. The
Speaker 4: other thing I would say is that we have not
Speaker 4: yet figured out the way to make saving fun. Like
Speaker 4: think about it. Shopping certainly fun, fun, Saving like it's
Speaker 4: this invisible activity, like when was the last time you
Speaker 4: went to your friends and you say tity, You wouldn't
Speaker 4: believe it. I saved two thousand dollars and I found
Speaker 4: a better insurance and I'm paying. It's not part of
Speaker 4: the conversation.
Speaker 2: It never is. Yes, And you know what that makes
Speaker 2: me think about, based on what you were just saying,
Speaker 2: how it's like way more fun to spend now rather
Speaker 2: than think about spending later. It makes me think about
Speaker 2: the buy now, pay later apps and things like that. Yes,
Speaker 2: that is relatively new to our way of spending. There
Speaker 2: were things like layaway you would get the wouldn't get
Speaker 2: the product till you finished paying. But now you can
Speaker 2: get the product you've only paid a little bit, and
Speaker 2: then you keep paying until you've paid it off. In
Speaker 2: simple terms, what's happening in our brains when we make
Speaker 2: a purchase and get to split that into future payments,
Speaker 2: and what mechanisms make the buy now, pay later feel
Speaker 2: easier than a credit card?
Speaker 4: Ye? So, so what happened with the buy now, pay
Speaker 4: later is First of all, the terminology is very good, right.
Speaker 4: It doesn't tell you pay much more later. It doesn't
Speaker 4: say anything about the interest. It doesn't say buy things
Speaker 4: you don't really need and pay for them later. The
Speaker 4: world has a vast interest in something that is not
Speaker 4: consistent with our best interest. In mind, Every coffee shop
Speaker 4: wants to sell you another coffee. Every restaurant want to
Speaker 4: sell you another dessert. Every supermarket want to send you
Speaker 4: another cook Now you can go to the supermarket with
Speaker 4: a plan what's called the shopping list. But the supermarket
Speaker 4: also has a plan.
Speaker 3: It does, it does.
Speaker 4: And their plan is not the same as your plan,
Speaker 4: and they control the environment. They decide what to put
Speaker 4: it hige level and what to put it the checkout.
Speaker 4: We live in the world in which people have plans
Speaker 4: to part us from our money. And then there's all
Speaker 4: kinds of tricks. So let's start with it, like the
Speaker 4: most basic trick. The most basic trick is called a sale.
Speaker 4: Imagine that there's a shirt for fifty dollars versus another
Speaker 4: store the same shirt, and they say this used to
Speaker 4: be one hundred dollars and now it's on fifty percent
Speaker 4: off and it's fifty dollars. Now why, like, when you
Speaker 4: think about sale, a sale, something is it's fifty Why
Speaker 4: would you care what it used to cost at some
Speaker 4: part time in the history? Right? You shouldn't. You should
Speaker 4: say is this shirt worth this price to me? Yes?
Speaker 2: Or no?
Speaker 4: Why do we care that it used to be one
Speaker 4: thousand dollars and now it's fifty, but we do why
Speaker 4: would we do a deal? That's right? That's right. What
Speaker 4: happens is that we have a really hard time assessing value.
Speaker 4: If I show you a shirt, I say, how much
Speaker 4: is it worth? I don't really know, very hard to
Speaker 4: figure out. But if it used to be one hundred
Speaker 4: dollars and now it's fifty, it's probably a good deal.
Speaker 4: So it's kind of a lazy way to compute value
Speaker 4: without thinking about how valuable is another show to you. Now,
Speaker 4: when you pay for something, you should care about what
Speaker 4: it is that you're getting, but we don't. Why it's
Speaker 4: very hard to estimate the value of what we're getting,
Speaker 4: so we estimate other things, like how much work has
Speaker 4: gone into that.
Speaker 1: So as a freelancer doing different work, the better I
Speaker 1: get at moving through projects, I have people on standby
Speaker 1: that I can subcontract out to help.
Speaker 3: I feel like when it took.
Speaker 1: A long time and there was a lot of back
Speaker 1: and forth, but really I didn't know what I was doing.
Speaker 3: At that point.
Speaker 1: People were like, oh, you've worked so hard, and now
Speaker 1: they're like, you turn this around in twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: We charge you this, sir, but also you didn't have
Speaker 1: to wait consider this, you know.
Speaker 4: And that's and that's because that's because the question is
Speaker 4: you think that people can assess the real value of
Speaker 4: your work, but they can't, so so they assess efforts.
Speaker 4: So there's this story wait.
Speaker 3: For thinking they can do it, or then from that VNA.
Speaker 4: Because because you know, if you if you go back
Speaker 4: to the vintage twist army knife, they are not equipped
Speaker 4: with a way to evaluate your work, so they're evaluating
Speaker 4: something else. There's a there's this story that Picasso is
Speaker 4: sitting on a bench and a woman come and says, Picasso,
Speaker 4: I'm a huge fan. Would you draw a picture of
Speaker 4: painting of me? And he takes his pen and does
Speaker 4: this thing, and in thirty seconds she has this thing
Speaker 4: and she looks at it. She said, you know what,
Speaker 4: you have captured my essence. I don't know how you
Speaker 4: do it, Like there's only one line and you've captured
Speaker 4: my essence. He said, how much is it? And it
Speaker 4: says it's five hundred dollars. He says five hundred dollars
Speaker 4: for thirty seconds. No, no, it's five hundred dollars for thirty
Speaker 4: years and thirty seconds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my experience over time.
Speaker 4: That's right. Now, we can say that, but the truth
Speaker 4: is it's really hard. Fairness and effort are very much,
Speaker 4: deeply embedded in us, and we use them as the
Speaker 4: strategy to evaluate things.
Speaker 2: We said a lot about Black Friday and shopping and
Speaker 2: spending money, but I feel like not everything can be
Speaker 2: completely bad. There's always a little bit of good there, right,
Speaker 2: no absolute evil, Like, what's the silver lining.
Speaker 3: On this h chaotic evil? Chaotic good?
Speaker 4: Black Friday is very special. It's one day of the year.
Speaker 4: It's one day of the year. Now, imagine that you
Speaker 4: went on an expensive meal. Imagine that usually you go
Speaker 4: out and you spend one hundred dollars on dinner and
Speaker 4: you buy the second chip this morning on the menu.
Speaker 4: Imagine that on some Tuesday, at some point you decide
Speaker 4: to double your restaurant spending and double the wine. What
Speaker 4: are the odds? So it was Tuesday, what's the odds
Speaker 4: that the following Tuesday you will not say to yourself,
Speaker 4: maybe I'm a two hundred dollars per dinner person, not
Speaker 4: one hundred dollars person. So the point I want to
Speaker 4: make is, then when we deviate from a regular strategy,
Speaker 4: an upscale on a regular Tuesday, there's no guarantee that
Speaker 4: we will not do it again and again and again
Speaker 4: on the next Tuesday.
Speaker 1: This is what happened to me becoming friends with tt
Speaker 1: on Tuesday. She's just she's just led me to a
Speaker 1: life of extravagance instead of a.
Speaker 4: One time they go. But imagine that you only met
Speaker 4: her and became extravagant with her one day a year. Now,
Speaker 4: it would not become a routine. So one of the
Speaker 4: things we showed is that when people increased the amount
Speaker 4: of spending and quality of their spending on a regular Tuesday,
Speaker 4: there's a big chance it would become a habit. When
Speaker 4: they do it on a very special day, Oh, I'm
Speaker 4: only doing it on my birthday or Valentine's Day or
Speaker 4: Black Friday, then it remains constrained. So I think that actually,
Speaker 4: you know, we spend too much, we waste, we spend
Speaker 4: in lines too much. I mean, there's all kinds of
Speaker 4: things to talk about the negative side, but I think
Speaker 4: there's also some think protective on saying I'm responsible most
Speaker 4: of the year, and I'm going to pick a day
Speaker 4: in the year to be less responsible, and because it's
Speaker 4: this day, that everybody does on the same day and
Speaker 4: so on. It would protect me from being irresponsible throughout
Speaker 4: the year.
Speaker 2: I feel like a lot of spending, Like Sophora is
Speaker 2: a store that sells makeup and hair stuff and they
Speaker 2: have Sephora Day where they say all their prices are
Speaker 2: going down, and all of these influencers that now I'm
Speaker 2: convinced they're being paid to do these videos, get on
Speaker 2: social media and say this is what you should should
Speaker 2: buy during the Sephora sale. This is my favorite foundation,
Speaker 2: this is my favorite mascara, this is my favorite shampoo,
Speaker 2: this is my favorite conditioner. I've listed everything for you.
Speaker 2: These are the most amazing products and they're going to
Speaker 2: be on discount on Sophora Day. And you see so
Speaker 2: many of those videos you start to feel like, oh am,
Speaker 2: I going to miss out on the opportunity by the
Speaker 2: saying will it be sold out? And so it feels
Speaker 2: like with social media and influencer culture, it's making people
Speaker 2: have this fear of missing out and then spending money
Speaker 2: that they typically wouldn't spend.
Speaker 4: So, just to be clear what we talked about the
Speaker 4: benefits of Black Friday, that it doesn't apply to Sepphori day.
Speaker 3: That's right, you tell her.
Speaker 4: And the reason and the reason is that the way
Speaker 4: that our mind works is that this is a day
Speaker 4: we go a little extra crazy spending, but it's only
Speaker 4: on that day. But if you do sphor a day,
Speaker 4: it's basically like you just spent on one day of
Speaker 4: the year, but there'll be other days in other places.
Speaker 4: And you basically are opening yourself up to say I'm
Speaker 4: a sucker for special days day.
Speaker 3: Now, and they're doing the stories, are doing it often enough.
Speaker 2: Every week is a special.
Speaker 4: But let's talk about the thing you described. A UNI
Speaker 4: described a version of something that is going away, and
Speaker 4: that's called scarcity. You said, it's a day. The next day,
Speaker 4: I would feel bad about it. Right, it's basically how
Speaker 4: does it work, it says, And there's not a lot
Speaker 4: of it, there's just some of it. Whatever is available
Speaker 4: will go away. It will not be to the next day.
Speaker 4: And scarcity gets us to think in a different way. Right,
Speaker 4: if you say, oh, this, this makeup would always be
Speaker 4: there at this price, you would say not interested, get
Speaker 4: it next time. But this makeup is going tomorrow. Now
Speaker 4: you start thinking, what if tomorrow I will decide I
Speaker 4: want it and it will be not available. I would
Speaker 4: feel terrible. I don't want to feel terrible, so let
Speaker 4: me buy it now so that I will not feel terrible.
Speaker 4: So scarcity is another really interesting trick. It's called counterfactual thinking.
Speaker 4: You say, what if I will want it and it
Speaker 4: will not be there? I would say to myself, I
Speaker 4: was not careful. I didn't think why I didn't buy it,
Speaker 4: and therefore we buy it. I'll give you an example
Speaker 4: where this is really strong.
Speaker 3: Oh that's what I want to hear about.
Speaker 4: You go and buy a new electronics. Let's say it's
Speaker 4: a big screen TV, standard American thing to do on
Speaker 4: Black Prides, and the salesperson says, tity, this TV is
Speaker 4: not coming with an extended warranty. The warranty is just
Speaker 4: for a year. How would you feel if a year
Speaker 4: and three days from now, few of this a little
Speaker 4: part of the screen did not work so well and
Speaker 4: you did not buy the extended warranty? How would you feel?
Speaker 4: And you think to yourself, I would feel very stupid. Yes,
Speaker 4: I would say, why on that Black Friday didn't I
Speaker 4: buy the extended warranty when the person offered it to me?
Speaker 4: So you say, you know what at the extended on.
Speaker 4: Many of those places make more money on the extended
Speaker 4: warranty that they make on the electronic themselves. Because the
Speaker 4: electronics we compare, we think about, and so on they
Speaker 4: extended warranty. It's kind of an emotional buy on top
Speaker 4: of something.
Speaker 2: All this just makes me think about girl math, like
Speaker 2: I was talking about before, and so that is the
Speaker 2: mental gymnastics that I do that allows me to feel
Speaker 2: like spending my money isn't so bad. You know, Like
Speaker 2: if I'm returning something and then I get store credit
Speaker 2: and I get something else with that store credit, that's
Speaker 2: something else that I just bought is free.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's a direct line.
Speaker 2: That's not how that works.
Speaker 4: One other interesting place where we do mistakes with money
Speaker 4: is what's called the pain of paying. So imagine that
Speaker 4: tonight you go to dinner. Imagine expensive dinner that's a
Speaker 4: two hundred dollars and you can either pay with cash
Speaker 4: or with credit card, which one would feel worse.
Speaker 2: Cash Why, I don't know, I have no idea, but
Speaker 2: it does.
Speaker 4: It turns out that the thing that is worse with
Speaker 4: cash is the timing of the payment and the consumption
Speaker 4: that when we pay with a credit card, we pay
Speaker 4: some time later. When we prepay, we buy like a
Speaker 4: gift certificate, we pay way in advance. If you go
Speaker 4: to a restaurant with the gift certificate, it feels great.
Speaker 4: It feels free. When when you pay later it doesn't
Speaker 4: feel as bad. Paying at the time of consumption feels
Speaker 4: very bad.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: The pain of paying is about this idea that when
Speaker 4: we part with money, it's not just about opportunity costs
Speaker 4: and so on. There's some almost like a moral cost.
Speaker 4: And the more cost has to do with how do
Speaker 4: we feel at the moment of spending. So things like
Speaker 4: credit cards are protecting us from feeling bad. Apple pay,
Speaker 4: Google Pay. Even worse, we don't even understand what work
Speaker 4: what we're spending. So a good piece of advice for
Speaker 4: Black Friday is to say, make a plan of what
Speaker 4: you want to buy. That's number one, right, Buying things
Speaker 4: is fine. Just make sure it's what you want, not
Speaker 4: what somebody else wants. And then and then the second
Speaker 4: thing is take the amount of money that you want
Speaker 4: to take out and spend that amount. Wow, right, make
Speaker 4: sure you don't go over it.
Speaker 3: I like that.
Speaker 4: That's that's very very important because the credit card is
Speaker 4: kind of numbing the pain of pain. Yes, And what
Speaker 4: you want to do is you want to feel the
Speaker 4: pain of pain. You want to say the pain of
Speaker 4: pain is basically getting anything. Do I really want this
Speaker 4: or not? You want that?
Speaker 3: Thought?
Speaker 4: So that's also an important element, like the payment method
Speaker 4: has an impact on how we feel about the payment.
Speaker 1: There are always viral videos and then the recaps with
Speaker 1: strong opinions on going out to eat with a group
Speaker 1: and what happens when the bill arrives, because some folks
Speaker 1: don't want to split the bill evenly because they're on
Speaker 1: a budget, and they're like, I only had an appetizer
Speaker 1: and water and it if you going out with tit,
Speaker 1: she's having lobster the entree as the appetizer and a
Speaker 1: cocktail okay, and sometimes more than one.
Speaker 3: If it's more than one, help us.
Speaker 2: We're gonna have fun tonight.
Speaker 1: But why do people get all cagy and weird and
Speaker 1: talking about they don't want to be friends?
Speaker 3: And somebody ordered too mini apps?
Speaker 1: Like what is it about meal time and the bill
Speaker 1: that makes us turn on each other?
Speaker 2: You're not yourself when you're hungry or after you just
Speaker 2: ate it things.
Speaker 4: When we do research, we try to isolate every element,
Speaker 4: and in real life many times there are multiple elements
Speaker 4: at the same time. So this story starts with escalating spending. Yes,
Speaker 4: you think you'll come to do appetizers, and restaurants are
Speaker 4: good at that, right, And if there's alcohol, inhibition goes
Speaker 4: down and you say, oh, yes, So restaurants are excellent
Speaker 4: in getting us not to think about rices and just
Speaker 4: to think about food. And there's a social element of
Speaker 4: somebody's ordering, and when it's unclear who is paying for it,
Speaker 4: there's like shying away from responsibility. Right, it's like a
Speaker 4: mob behavior. Who is responsible? I don't really know who
Speaker 4: ordered all of this, And because you didn't say everybody,
Speaker 4: it's equals splitting or something that people are kind of.
Speaker 4: It's like a mob behavior basically. So when it's the
Speaker 4: same group of friend going, I really like the approach
Speaker 4: of one person buying for everybody and alternating who is
Speaker 4: the person buying. If she would have said to people,
Speaker 4: send me the money your share, people would have because
Speaker 4: she paid, and we are kind of wired for reciprocity,
Speaker 4: it could be very hard to walk from her.
Speaker 1: Is there anything that you feel like this is one
Speaker 1: piece that people need to know like even if it's
Speaker 1: not Black Friday, but just holiday vibes, Like we get
Speaker 1: in a holiday spirit and that goes longer than one day.
Speaker 3: Like is there anything you want people to be thinking about?
Speaker 4: So there are two other things I want people to
Speaker 4: think about as we get closer to the holidays. The
Speaker 4: first thing is that it is better to save for
Speaker 4: dis questionary spending than to borrow. So if you plan
Speaker 4: for the holiday season, try to save the money so
Speaker 4: you have it in advance and then spend it rather
Speaker 4: than spend it and then hope to pay it later. Now,
Speaker 4: the last thing I want to say is, you know,
Speaker 4: we talked about the pain of pain. One of the
Speaker 4: things that the pain of pain teaches us is also
Speaker 4: something about what is a good gift? So the question
Speaker 4: of what is a good gift, there's lots of is
Speaker 4: to think about it, but one way that comes from
Speaker 4: the pain of pain is the good gift is a
Speaker 4: gift that somebody wants but feel guilty buying for themselves.
Speaker 4: So imagine you walk down the street and you see
Speaker 4: a hat and it's a beautiful hat, and you're not
Speaker 4: the head person. You never had the hat, but you're curious.
Speaker 4: You go in the store, you put it on your head.
Speaker 4: It's beautiful, you like the color of the shape, but
Speaker 4: you look at the price tag and it's crazy expensive,
Speaker 4: and you said to yourself, I'm not the had person.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to buy this hat. And you get
Speaker 4: home and you find out that your significant other bought
Speaker 4: you that exact head from your joint checking account. How
Speaker 4: do you feel? Most people say I feel gratitude. I
Speaker 4: don't say to her, honey, you know I looked at
Speaker 4: this hat and decide not to buy it. Please return
Speaker 4: it to the store and put the money back into
Speaker 4: a checking count. Example for something that people want but
Speaker 4: feel guilty about buying, and a good you know, like
Speaker 4: between friends, Like I don't need to give my friends money,
Speaker 4: like I wouldn't directly deposit money into the checking account.
Speaker 4: I want to do something for them that they would
Speaker 4: do themselves. So something that people feel guilty about.
Speaker 3: Tit does this for me very nice.
Speaker 2: I do it for all the people that I love.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I wouldn't need this for me, but here's
Speaker 2: five hundred dollars for a spot.
Speaker 4: Ay when we did a study on gifts, and what
Speaker 4: we learned was that gift givers don't want to take risks,
Speaker 4: but the people who get the gifts often wish that
Speaker 4: people took more more risks. And I think, you know,
Speaker 4: if I give you a gift, I want you to
Speaker 4: think about me. I want that gift to be a
Speaker 4: mechanism for us to start caring more about each other.
Speaker 4: I'm not giving you a gift because you can't. You
Speaker 4: don't have enough money to buy a bottle of wine,
Speaker 4: and I need to subsidize that. So real gifts, not
Speaker 4: gifts that you know, you eat a bar of chocolate
Speaker 4: and it goes away. Real gifts, it takes a risk.
Speaker 4: You buy somebody hat, you buy them a drum set,
Speaker 4: you get them a chair. It's risky, yeah, but the
Speaker 4: risk has payoff in terms of friendship.
Speaker 2: I found this so interesting because it really made me
Speaker 2: rethink the way that I think about spending, Like maybe
Speaker 2: I should stop doing all this girl math and really
Speaker 2: just save my money. And have you know these special
Speaker 2: days where I'm spending rather than making every day a
Speaker 2: special day?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I think every time we have an
Speaker 1: episode that shows me how the brain betrays me. My
Speaker 1: brain doesn't know what to do with money, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, and we didn't even get into the like
Speaker 1: emotional ties with money as much as we could have.
Speaker 1: There's so much there. There's so much also historical things
Speaker 1: like what you learned from your family, what your friends do.
Speaker 1: It's expensive to be friends with t T y'all.
Speaker 2: Don't lie. It's very expensive to be as the kid's friend. Listen,
Speaker 2: it is very expensive. You must like carry on, we're
Speaker 2: just peasing a poe.
Speaker 1: I want to know you know, now that we know
Speaker 1: Black Friday isn't so bad. I want to hear from
Speaker 1: our listeners like, what are y'all getting? Are you getting anything?
Speaker 1: What's your take? Is there a special thing you've been
Speaker 1: saving up for all year? Have you seen a really
Speaker 1: good deal? Do you think good deals still exists?
Speaker 2: And also send me the links in the DM because
Speaker 2: maybe I want that thing too.
Speaker 3: I've learned nothing, nothing, y'all.
Speaker 1: You see how hard it is to change your mind.
Speaker 1: You can find us on X and Instagram at Dope Labs.
Speaker 1: Podcast TT is on X and Instagram, at d R
Speaker 1: Underscore T.
Speaker 2: S h O, and you can find Zakiya at z
Speaker 2: said so.
Speaker 3: Dope Labs is a production of Lamanada Media.
Speaker 1: Our supervising producer is Keegan Zimma and our producer is
Speaker 1: Issara Acevez. Dope Labs is sound designed, edited and mixed
Speaker 1: by James farber Lamanada Media's Vice President of Partnerships and
Speaker 1: Production is Jackie Danziger. Executive producer from iHeart Podcast is
Speaker 1: Katrina Norbel.
Speaker 3: Marketing lead is Alison Kanter.
Speaker 2: Original music composed and produced by Takayasuzawa and Alex sugi Ura,
Speaker 2: with additional music by Elijah Harvey. Dope Labs is executive
Speaker 2: produced by us T T Show Dia and Zakiah Watte.