Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Tightwads and spendthrifts marry each other
Opposites marry
Those are the actual labels in the academic research: two spending profiles that sort people by how they feel about spending money. A tightwad paired with a spendthrift is more likely than a tightwad with a tightwad or a spendthrift with a spendthrift. Opposites attract, and there may be some thrill in the differences early on.
The cost to marriage
The marriages that follow tend to be less satisfying and to carry more conflict over money. A partner who wants to save toward a long-term vision of life and a spouse who wants to spend a lot today make those goals much harder to reach. Plenty of these couples make it work, since a tightwad and a spendthrift can succeed with a different level of coordination and communication.
Measuring the pain of paying
A short scale built by researchers at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Michigan measures the pain of paying, the emotional distress some people feel when spending money. In one question, a coat that is usually $300 is on sale for $100. The A answer waits for a better deal, the B answer buys it as a great value, and the C answer buys it plus a matching scarf because so much was saved. Mostly A answers mark a tightwad, mostly B an unconflicted person in the middle, and mostly C a spendthrift.
Why do tightwads and spendthrifts end up together?
In a 2011 study in the Journal of Marketing Research, Scott Rick, Deborah Small, and Eli Finkel surveyed married couples about their spending styles. They found that people tended to pair with their opposite on this trait, and that spouses who differed more reported more conflict about money. The paper's title, 'Fatal (Fiscal) Attraction,' was a play on the 1987 film Fatal Attraction.
How was the tightwad-spendthrift scale built?
George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon, Scott Rick, and Cynthia Cryder published the scale in the Journal of Consumer Research in 2008. It uses a handful of questions, and scores sort people along a line from tightwad to spendthrift. In their original sample, tightwads outnumbered spendthrifts, and the largest group sat in the middle. The measure has since been used in studies of credit card use and saving.
Why do credit cards ease the pain of paying?
Drazen Prelec and George Loewenstein introduced the phrase in a 1998 paper in Marketing Science. They argued that paying cash ties each purchase to a visible loss, while a card separates the buying from the paying. A 2007 brain imaging study led by Brian Knutson found that excessive prices activated the insula, a region linked to pain and disgust. In 2001, Prelec and Duncan Simester reported that students bidding for basketball tickets were willing to pay substantially more with a card than with cash.
More from The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
