Hasta La Gadget!

We’d like to think that we’re in control of our consumption habits. But anyone who’s ever walked out of Whole Foods with two heavy bags in their hands when they had intended to buy only a cucumber knows that this isn’t always the case.

Retailers know that we’re vulnerable to a number of influences when considering our purchases — and they’ve made a whole science out of optimizing the shopping experience. Many retailers manipulate nearly every aspect of our time in their inviting spaces — from the layout and smell of the store to the price of the items to the behavior of the salespeople — in order to separate you from as much of your money as possible.

Here are seven ways that consumers are using psychology to dupe you into buying more stuff.

They appeal to our emotions using round numbers.

When judging costs, there’s more that goes into our decision to buy than just how high or low the cost is. The way the numbers are presented also makes a difference.

A study recently published in the Journal of Consumer Research found that when a purchase is motivated by feelings, consumers prefer rounded numbers (e.g. $80). In contrast, a non-rounded price ($77.59) encourages consumers to buy when that purchase is based on reason. In other words, if the consumer is considering buying something they want, then they will be more likely to do so if the price is a round number. But if they are buying something they need, non-rounded numbers will be more persuasive.

“Ours is the first research to show that the mere roundedness of a price number could significantly influence consumer preferences, depending on whether a purchase is driven by feelings or has a more utilitarian purpose,” the study’s authors explain.

They fill the air with inviting scents.

Next time you’re at the mall, beware of the warm, comforting scents like cinnamon — innocent as they may seem, they may be a retailer’s way of tricking you into splurging on a new product.

New research finds that people who smell “warm” fragrances feel that they’re in a more crowded space, and as a result feel less powerful. “This can lead them to compensate by buying items they feel are more prestigious,” the study’s authors explain.

In the future, you might also find more and more stores (and not just L’Occitane) pleasing your nose with the calming scent of lavender as you walk in the door. According to a new study from Leiden University, the scent of lavender can create feelings of trust.

“Smelling the aroma of lavender may help a seller to establish more easily a trusting negotiation to sell a car, or in a grocery store it may induce consumers to spend more money buying products,” explained Leiden psychologist Roberta Sellaro.

They’re mean to you.

Being harassed by rude salespeople might not seem like something that would make you want to become a patron of a particular store — but the research suggests that in luxury stores, it may be the case.

According to research from the University of British Columbia, consumers who interacted with rude staff at a high-end store were more likely to purchase expensive products. However, this effect did not extend to mass-market brands.

“It appears that snobbiness might actually be a qualification worth considering for luxury brands like Louis Vuitton or Gucci,” marketing researcher Darren Dahl said in a statement. “Our research indicates they can end up having a similar effect to an ‘in-group’ in high school that others aspire to join.”

They make it difficult to find what you need.

Ever get lost in Ikea or a huge Forever 21 store? There’s a good chance that you have, and that it was the store’s fault — not yours.

Store layouts that feel like a maze might be frustrating, but they may also lead you to buy more. Basically, the store or mall employs a tactic meant to disorient you into buying more stuff. It’s a phenomenon known in marketing and advertising as the “Gruen Transfer”: There’s a moment at which we stop looking for the item we were shopping for, and we start just shopping.

This is in many cases the reason that grocery stores relegate essential items like milk and eggs at the back of the store, forcing the consumer to wander through aisles to get there.

They tempt you with delicious treats.

“Free” samples might not be quite as altruistic as they seem. A study published in the Journal of Consumer Research indulging in a sweet treat can boost a shopper’s desire for non-food luxuries.

Just a taste of free chocolate could “activate goals associated with indulgence… and encourage subsequent acts of indulgence,” the researchers explain.

They let you play with things.

If you’re trying to save money, think twice before you try that hand lotion or pick through a pile of sweaters. According to 2009 research, consumers who touch products will pay more for them than those who keep their hands off. Apparently, putting our hands on things makes us feel a greater sense of ownership over them.

“When you touch something, you instantly feel more of a connection to it,” study co-author Suzanne Shu, a marketing professor at UCLA told TIME. “That connection stirs up an emotional reaction — ‘Yeah, I like the feel of it. This can be mine.’ And that emotion can cause you to buy something you never would have bought if you hadn’t touched it.”

They use music to get you in the mood to spend.

While careful consumers buy less than usual when music is playing in a store, research has shown that impulse shoppers tend to be swayed by a good beat. A 2005 study found that shoppers who made unplanned purchases spent an average of $32 more when slow-tempo popular music was playing than those in a control condition with no music.

One of the most beloved — and oldest — wedding traditions is having a bridal party. In ancient times, bridesmaids were actually used as sneaky decoys to outsmart evil sprits (for reals), while today they’re just another part of the widely-accepted wedding to-do list: Get engaged, set a date, choose your bridal party.

Yet, while we love seeing gorgeous photos of a bride and her maids — and, of course, a groom and his men — neither of us actually had a bridal party at our own nuptials. (And not because we don’t have any friends, we swear.)

In planning each of our weddings, we realized that we actually didn’t want to have a bridal party. And so we opted not to. Like many wedding traditions, this one is not for everyone — and that’s okay.

If you’re thinking you might want to forgo this part of your planning, too, here are some solid reasons why you should follow your instincts.

1. It’s stressful.
Honestly, it’s already crazy-making enough to find your own gown. Picking one (or a few) that has to work on an entire group of women, all with different taste and body types can cause anxiety that’s not just necessary. Also, have you seen Say Yes to the Dress: Bridesmaids? Unless your group of girls is made up of completely mature, selfless, opinion-less, drama-free individuals, someone is going to end up in tears or feeling resentful. (Probably you.) As one of our favorite modern proverbs states: Ain’t nobody got time for that.

2. It’s a financial burden on you — and them.
If you’re looking for a way to cut your budge down, getting rid of your bridal party is a great way to do it: You can seriously chop down the florist costs (by not having to order extra bouquets and boutonnieres) and you won’t need to buy gifts or extras for your pals.

Plus, these days, when everyone seems to need to travel for weddings, you’re actually doing your nearest and dearest a favor by not asking them to shell out money for a dress (or tux), shoes, a shower, and a bachelor/bachelorette party. Your closest pals can take it upon themselves to throw your events and then wear whatever they want to your wedding.

3. Your wedding is not about your friends — it’s about your marriage.
Look, we love coordinated group outfits as much as anyone. But, if you really want to dress up with your friends, there will be many opportunities throughout your life to do so. (Halloween, anyone?) Your wedding is not about color schemes or what your friends wear or, really, even about what you wear: It’s about celebrating a life-long commitment to your partner.

Look, your friends and family are already going to be there to support you. It sounds silly to even say this but wearing matching outfits is not a requisite to show you said support. All they have to do is show up.

4. Having a bridal party can alienate the other guests at your wedding.
Narrowing down your guest list is heard enough. But having to pick and choose who comes to your pre-wedding events — Just family? Family and bridal party? Everyone? — is a whole other level of stress. Plus, when you choose to have a bridal party, you automatically create a separation between those closest to you and those who are not quite as close. Clearly, there are people in your life who are tighter with than others, but there’s really no need to highlight your friend rankings at your wedding.

5. You can let your friends relax without pressure.
Being in a bridal party, a bridesmaid especially, can be a really long, really tiring day. Forging this tradition relieves your pals of having to wake up at oh-dark-thirty, stand up in front of a crowd of people, and generally be “on” for your whole wedding day.

Just because you don’t have a bridal party, that doesn’t mean you can’t ask some close pals to have lunch with you pre-ceremony and help wrangle you into your dress. Another thing to remember: If your maids have to get hair and makeup done too, you have to wake up early with them and be there while they do so. Show of hands… who would rather just sleep in?

6. Friend groups can mesh in other ways.
One of the arguments for having a bridal party is that doing so allows your various close pals to bond during pre-wedding activities, like dress shopping, planning sessions, DIY wine nights and so on. But given that your BFFs are likely scattered around the country, getting them together multiple times before your big day probably isn’t even feasible.

Instead, your bachelorette party can totally suffice as a quality bonding weekend: you’ll get your closest friends together (and, we’re just going to come right out and say it, tipsy) so they feel comfortable dancing and letting loose together at your wedding.

A Southern California mom is accused of having sex with her daughter’s underage ex-boyfriend.

Last week, NBC San Diego reported that Fereshta Angel Williams, 38 of Deer Springs was charged with having sex with a minor more than three years younger than herself, two counts of oral copulation of a minor and one count of trying to dissuade a witness.

After a weeks-long investigation, police arrested Williams on Jan. 5. Authorities did not say why they started investigating her.

The New York Daily News reports that Williams is free on bond and is due back in court on Feb. 3.

The news comes just one month after a Pennsylvania mom made headlines when she was arrested for allegedly having sex with a 17-year-old boy she met while volunteering for her daughter’s high school cheerleading team.

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Hong Kong, Sydney, Vancouver and the San Francisco Bay Area have the worst middle-income housing affordability in 9 nations, according to 11th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey. Median house prices in Hong Kong were 17 times the median household income, a measure called the “median multiple.” Vancouver had a median multiple of 10.6, Sydney 9.8, while San Francisco and San Jose were each at 9.2. Other cities (metropolitan areas) with especially high median multiples included Melbourne (8.7), London (8.5), San Diego (8.3) Auckland (8.2), and Los Angeles (8.0).

The range among the 86 large cities is considerable. For example, in the United States, income adjusted house prices in the most expensive cities were from double to triple the levels in more affordable markets (such as fast growing Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and Atlanta and strong markets such as Columbus and Indianapolis). It is also new. For decades following World War II, the median multiple was 3.0 or less Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. International housing affordability performance is summarized in the Table.

Why Housing Affordability is Important

Housing costs are the largest element of household budgets, and they vary far more between cities. By comparison, other expenses, such as transportation, clothing and food vary little between cities. Middle-income housing affordability is a principal determinant of the standard of living, because households paying more for housing have less with which to purchase other goods and services.

In addition, where middle-income housing prices are high relative to incomes, lower income housing costs tend to be higher. This is evident in costly California, which according to the US Census Bureau has the highest housing-cost adjusted poverty rate in the nation. This is substantially higher than states with reputations for high poverty rates, at half higher than Mississippi and nearly twice that of West Virginia.

Finally, middle-income housing affordability is important to the economy of cities. More prosperous residents mean more prosperous cities. Further, more expensive cities tend to lose residents to those that are less expensive, as recent Harvard University research indicates.

Housing Affordability Differences

There are still some affordable middle-income markets, but affordability has been lost in others. Some cities have deteriorated to “severely unaffordable,” with median multiples over 5.0, well above the 3.0 benchmark.

Why are there such large differences in housing affordability? Put in layman’s terms, the problem is land shortages created by planning policies. Cities have drawn urban growth boundaries, beyond which middle-income housing construction is virtually prohibited. Consistent with economic axiom, restrictions on supply lead to higher prices, other things being equal. These “urban containment” policies drive up land prices, which also drives up house prices. House construction costs are little different, for example, between the Atlanta and San Francisco metropolitan areas. But the land in San Francisco drives prices to more than three times that of Atlanta, income adjusted.

Urban containment seeks to stop urban expansion (“urban sprawl”). Yet, as The Economist indicates, sprawl can only be stopped “forcefully. But the consequences of doing that are severe.” These include higher house prices and, according to Chief financial writer of The Financial Times Martin Wolf, “…ultimately force people to live in more cramped conditions than would occur without limits on supply.”

The nexus between urban containment regulation and higher house prices is confirmed in economic research. Just a few examples include Paul Cheshire, of the London School of Economics (see Urban Containment, Housing Affordability and Price Stability – Irreconcilable Goals), Alain Bertaud, a former principal planner at the World Bank, Arthur Grimes, former Chairman of the Board of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Kate Barker, former member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England and the late Stephen Mayo of the World Bank.

Most and Least Affordable Cities

In Australia, where urban containment regulation is virtually universal, all five markets had severely unaffordable housing, from 6.0 in Brisbane to 9.8 in Sydney. Even Adelaide (6.4) was severely unaffordable, despite its ranking in the lower performing third of world metropolitan economies by the Brookings Institution.

The US had nine severely unaffordable US cities, from Seattle (5.2) and Boston (5.4) to San Francisco and San Jose (9.2). In the United Kingdom, trendy London was severely unaffordable (8.5), along with Liverpool (5.2), long among the most depressed cities.

The US had a near monopoly on housing affordability. Two-thirds of US markets were affordable or moderately unaffordable. All but four of the 27 most affordable cities were in the US, where urban containment policy has spread to a smaller percentage of cities.

Former Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Donald Brash characterized the urban containment-housing affordability connection in his introduction to the 4th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey indicating: “…the affordability of housing is overwhelmingly a function of just one thing, the extent to which governments place artificial restrictions on the supply of residential land.”

National Middle-Income Housing Affordability

Combining the cities, the US was the most affordable (3.6), followed by Ireland (4.3) and Canada (4.5). The least affordable were Australia (6.4), New Zealand (8.2) and Hong Kong. Similar surveys are described that show a median of 8.6 among 40 major metropolitan areas in China (The Economist) and 3.7 in Korea by Kookmin Bank (Figure).

Middle-Income Households

There is increasing international concern about the declining fortunes of middle-income households. At the Brisbane G-20 Summit in November, governments around the world declared “better living standards” to be the highest priority and indicated a commitment to reduce poverty. This requires not only higher incomes, but avoiding policies that unnecessarily raise the cost of living, such as the cost of housing. Middle-Income housing affordability relies on a “plentiful and affordable” supply of land for development on the urban fringe, as urbanist New York University Professor Shlomo Angel indicates in his introduction to this year’s Demographia Survey.

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Note: Wendell Cox of Demographia and Hugh Pavletich of performanceurbanplanning.org produce the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey.

ATHENS — In the weeks before the sweeping victory of radical left Syriza, pre-election dinner parties organized in posh Athenian neighborhoods had a mocking theme: “Let’s eat our last supper, before the commies come and take away our houses, bank accounts, etc.”

It was a repetition of the 1981 scare-rhetoric, when Pasok came to power and promised to redistribute wealth, creating similar fears among the upper classes. Nothing of that sort happened. The Greek bourgeoisie survived two decades of Pasok reign unscratched.

Many see Syriza as Pasok reborn, a new Volkspartei, which promised too much during the campaign, only to be abruptly confronted with the reality after the election. The U-turn is already obvious in the words of Greece’s new prime minister, Alexis Tsipras: once he ironically called the German chancellor “Madame Merkel” and accused her of leading the Greek people into hell. In more recent comments he attributed Ms. Merkel’s obsession with austerity to her Protestant ethic and her rigidness in observing the rules.

A German journalist I spoke with recently predicted the German chancellor wouldn’t have such of a hard time with Syriza’s leader: “She managed to exterminate all enemies of her own party, beginning with Helmut Kohl and ending with Karl-Theodor zu Gutenberg. She will eat Mr. Tsipras for breakfast,” he predicted.

“The Greeks expect Tsipras to scale back demands.”

Merkel herself said that Tsipras would scale back the demands that have put him on a collision course with creditors. That’s what the majority of Greek people expect from him and that’s why many of the voters supported him: in the expectation that he wouldn’t do what he pledged to.

This Doctor Jekyll/Mr. Hyde attitude of the Greek electorate reflects the persistently high percentage of people who favor remaining in the Eurozone. It also explains the carte blanche now given to Syriza’s expensive economic program that puts Greece at risk of a clash with the troika and paves the way for a “Grexit.”

The two-month-extension of the current program (which the previous government achieved in order to finalize negotiations with the troika) expires at the end of February. Liquidity is running out, given the extensive deposit withdrawals over the last weeks due to political uncertainty (2,5 billion Euros in a month).

Many taxpayers refused to pay their debts to the tax authority in the prospect of a Syriza win, as the radical left pledged to scrap an unpopular property tax (ENFIA). Investors are unwilling to put their money in a fragile economy that could end up not being part of the Eurozone in a few months time. Unemployment remains very high (25,8 percent in October 2014), although there were some encouraging signs in the data last published.

The success story of a budget surplus, which the previous government tried to tell, is beginning to show cracks. Its timing is very unfortunate: Greece could be a breath away from recovery and find itself facing a Grexit.

The big question is how good a diplomat Mr. Tsipras is. How will he find common ground with the EU, the ECB and the IMF without angering his electorate and the left wing of Syriza, which consists of Maoists, Trotskyists and Eurosceptics. Yannis Varoufakis, an economics professor tipped to be the next finance minister, famously told a journalist that if ECB head, Mario Draghi doesn’t give in to Syriza’s demands, Mr. Tsipras should hang up the phone on him.

But now that Syriza has seized power, a standoff with Mr. Draghi looks highly unlikely. On the contrary: His offer of a Greek participation in the QE, providing the country sticks to its bailout program, could provide the essential incentive for a future compromise by the new Greek government.

Mr. Tsipras could show some symbolic gestures (by reopening ERT, the public broadcasting corporation, rehiring the 600 cleaning ladies of the economy minister or increasing the tax for higher incomes) and backpedal on other issues (namely the minimum wage and the re-regulation of the labor market), which could prove a casus belli for the creditors.

“Spain, France and Italy could follow.”

During the election campaign, there was a cacophony of contradicting opinions coming from Syriza candidates. Nobody knows for sure who spoke the truth. The aforementioned Mr. Varoufakis, who favors a chicken game with Draghi? The left-wing hardliner, Mr. Panagiotis Lafazanis, who doesn’t consider the Drachma a taboo? Ms. Nadia Valavani, who could become the next minister of foreign affairs and has said that, once in power, her party would ask for a program extension? Or Mr. George Stathakis, a possible development minister, who finds a debt re-profiling more realistic than a haircut.

The strong mandate he got from the polls, has put a burden on Mr. Tsipras to fulfill the great expectations he produced. He gave hope to people that were reeling from the worst economic crisis in the post-war period, in a country that has lost a quarter of its 2008 GDP and entered its sixth year of depression. He has to live up to the pan-European hype he created, becoming an icon for the radical left in the EU.

If he succeeds, the Spanish Podemos, the French Front National and Italy’s Bepe Grillo could all follow suit and question Berlin’s fiscal orthodoxy. The much feared domino effect set off by Greece at the outset of euro crisis in 2010, could now materialize in another way.

This piece also appeared in The European.