![]() ![]() Scarcity produces a kind of tunnel vision, and it explains why, when we're in a hole, we often lose sight of long-term priorities and dig ourselves even deeper. When you're hungry, it's hard to think of anything other than food, when you're desperately poor, you constantly worry about making ends meet. It went like this - when you really want something, you start to focus on it obsessively. A few years ago, he and Eldar Shafir, a psychology professor at Princeton, started researching a hypothesis. VEDANTAM: This is Sendhil Mullainathan, an economics professor at Harvard. SENDHIL MULLAINATHAN: When you have scarcity, and it creates a scarcity mindset, it leads you to take certain behaviors which, in the short term, help you manage scarcity but in the long term, only make matters worse. So why did she make these mistakes? One explanation - the psychological phenomenon of scarcity. VEDANTAM: Brandi had always been careful and conscientious. VEDANTAM: And of course, there was the credit card bill itself.ĭREW: By the time I paid it off, it was over $800 for a $500 card. VEDANTAM: In that moment, as she was maxing out the credit card on the household supplies she needed, Brandi forgot about things that was slightly less pressing.ĭREW: What I didn't think about is what about gas money? I didn't consider what gas would cost. So I, like, maxed it out within the first couple of days that I had it rather than holding on to it for emergency purposes. Like, I stocked up on things all at once rather than keeping it handy just in case. The day it arrived, she ran straight out the door to Wal-Mart.ĭREW: And I bought, like, a family size of toilet paper, a family size of laundry detergent. To make ends meet, she ordered a new credit card. VEDANTAM: Brandi tried to bring in money doing odd jobs, but the stress grew. I felt like a - I felt like a failure as a parent because I didn't provide a good example even though it was a mistake. ![]() I just didn't know what to do at that point. I didn't want to tell my husband what had happened. I didn't want to go home and tell my kids what had happened. I cried for, like, a whole day because I couldn't believe it. ![]() VEDANTAM: Brandi thought an apology and an explanation would do. It wasn't until later that she discovered that she had used the wrong card, not her own but the company credit card.ĭREW: My supervisor called me in and said, hey, what's this purchase? So had she not said anything, I don't think I would have realized that. VEDANTAM: So Brandi stopped at a store, grabbed the diapers and swiped her credit card at the self-checkout station. It was, like, maybe a 10-mile drive, busy traffic area, and I knew I had to pick up diapers, and the easiest thing for me I thought would be to pick them up before I picked the baby up. One day, she made a mistake.īRANDI DREW: I was just in a rush to get home, that was all, because day care closes at 6. She'd been with her employer for more than a decade. SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: Six years ago, Brandi Drew was working at a senior living facility in Michigan. Here's NPR's social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam. They say scarcity touches on many aspects of our lives. Two researchers have looked into how we respond to scarcity as they call it. Maybe it's money you're lacking or time or love or just the latest gadget that other people seem to have. Many people have noticed this - when you realize something important is missing in your life, your brain can only seem to focus on that one thing. ![]()
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