Peer pressure influences us … If everyone is telling you that something is good, you’re probably going to agree — or at least that’s what your brain will try to think.
And for adults, one of the best measures of what their peers like can be found on price tags.
Researchers tested just how much the luxurious feeling that comes with using a high-priced good determines the enjoyment of that good.
People were asked to sample and rate what they were told were five different wines. In reality, there were only three wines, each with a fake price tag — a $5 wine labeled $45, for example.
The results show that those fake prices carried a lot of weight: The participants thought they tasted five different wines, and the more “expensive” the wine, the more they liked it.
And they weren’t just lying to themselves: The researchers tested parts of the participants’ brains and found that when sipping a purportedly higher-priced wine, there was more activity in the parts that experience pleasure.
Excerpted from US News: The Fine Pleasures of Paying Through the Nose. February 28, 2008 :
http://money.usnews.com/money/business-economy/articles/2008/02/28/the-fine-pleasures-of-paying-through-the-nose.html
