If You Dwell on Your Money Mistakes, Then You Are Likely to Repeat Them.
Everyone makes financial mistakes, but it’s too easy to dwell on them. And, unfortunately, housing is counterproductive. When it comes to your finances, you are better off looking to the future than the past.
The more you focus on your past spending mistakes, the more likely you are to make them again. This is evidenced by a recent study published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology . The researchers wanted to see how our memories of past financial mistakes or accomplishments affect our current habits. In one experiment, when subjects were asked to recall past spending mistakes, they were more likely to run into debt on an imaginary trip to the mall.
Other subjects were asked to recall times when they made correct and intelligent spending decisions. But they had to remember many of these incidents, and when they could not, they were wasted in the mall too.
The study concluded:
We show that while recalling successes seems like a good idea, in cases where recalling is difficult, this strategy can backfire … Moreover, compared to recalling successes easily, recalling failures does little to increase self-control, despite the generally accepted the opinion that a person learns from his past mistakes. In fact, our results prove that focusing on past mistakes can doom us to repeat them. Given that many factors can lead to interference and help programs to fail, every push counts — we hope that identifying this revocation risk can help design more effective programs.
Research suggests that it’s best to move away from money mistakes and put the past in the past. Sure, it’s good to learn from these mistakes, but thinking about them seems to make us feel like we are doomed to repeat them again. To learn more about the study, follow the links below.
Haunts or Helps from the Past: Understanding the Impact of Memories on Current Self-Control | Journal of Consumer Psychology via Vanderbilt University