Overwhelming stimuli

By surrounding us with stimuli designed to overwhelm our cognitive processing, we are less likely to think through our decisions in any complete way. When we walk into a shopping mall filled with Christmas tinsel, Christmas music, lights and sounds, we are going to experience some form of ego depletion.

Ego depletion doesn’t mean you instantly become a humble, thoughtful person. In psychology, we use this term to describe how people don’t always think through their decision-making in a rational and linear way when placed under situations of stress.

So, all that noise, colour and movement, isn’t just the shopping centre or strip getting into the festive season. It’s also a technique to get you to think a little less completely, and respond to emotional cues, such as social norms, FOMO (fear of missing out), and rituals.

Our inability to forecast

Psychological research tells us humans aren’t very good at predicting the future. Or perhaps we just have an over-inflated sense of our accuracy in predicting the future – we rely on how we feel right now to predict how we might feel about something later. Psychologists call this affective forecasting.

So, in the moment, and just in that moment, we buy things we think we will need. But we discount all the other things that we have bought, and also discount how having all that stuff didn’t necessarily make things great last time.

If we think about Christmas lunch or dinner, few of us can plan how much food we will actually need and we aren’t very good at knowing how much we will end up eating (or need to eat). We pile our plate high, because we don’t really know how much we need, but do know how much we want. Lots and lots. Just in case we miss out on something great.

It’s the same with gifts. We often don’t plan, and so we are more susceptible to the gentle nudges of the marketers when we are stressed, in a hurry, and trying to do ten things at once.

How to resist the temptation

Despite our belief that we are all individuals, making independent decisions and choosing what we want and when we want it, humans are social, conforming and compliant creatures. If we see “our people” are doing something, we tend to assume this is something we should also do.

If we’re looking around and our environment is signalling this is what we do at Christmas time, then it’s easier to comply than to resist.

Christmas is a tough time to commit to reducing consumption, but it is possible. Resisting any natural response requires a commitment to the idea of resistance, a willingness to practise that resistance at all times (we know the more we do something, the easier it becomes) and, importantly, surrounding ourselves with people who will help us to resist, or at least won’t sabotage that resistance.

This doesn’t mean cutting yourself off from society. But it does mean coming to terms with the idea you are open to manipulation, framing, priming and persuasion, and coming up with ways to avoid it.

Focus on the idea of Christmas – time with family and friends, treating ourselves to novel food, eating all the great fruit that’s available this time of year – rather than succumbing to the commercial nudges that seem to have become imperative to Christmas.

Give gifts if you wish, but think about what is moving you toward buying those gifts. With this knowledge, you might make a few better choices.