MANILA, Philippines?The song is right: when the going gets tough, the tough do go shopping. And when they do, they tend to pay more than the average shopper because they feel more insecure about themselves.

What they may not realize, however, is that they?re shopping under the influence of an emotion. This isn?t the same as so-called ?retail therapy? where people deliberately go out and buy things to feel better about themselves. In the ?misery-isn?t-miserly? condition, they go shopping without knowing they feel bad.

This is the message from a study presented at the Feb. 9 meeting of the Society for Social and Personality Psychology.

Graduate student Cynthia Cryder from Carnegie Mellon University was lead author on the paper, which will appear in the June issue of the journal Psychological Science. Professors from Harvard University, Stanford University and the University of Pittsburgh co-authored the study.

How emotions affect shopping

The report focused on what the researchers termed the ?misery-is-not-miserly-effect.? A previous study that looked into shopping in a mood had shown that the participants who?d been preconditioned to be sad paid about 30 percent more than the control group when buying something.

To get a better understanding of how emotions affect shopping decisions, Cryder and her colleagues first recruited 33 volunteers by offering to pay a modest amount for their time. Half of the participants were shown a video clip in which a key figure in a movie died to make them. They were later asked to write down how they would feel if something similar had happened to them in real life. The rest of the participants watched a video on the Great Barrier Reef and made notes about their daily activities.

Researchers analyzed these statements later to see how many times each volunteer used terms like ?me,? ?myself? and ?I.? These words helped gauge the levels of self-focus, or how attuned each participant was to his or herself.

Link between egos and essays

Cryder and her colleagues then offered each participant the chance to bid for and buy a particular water bottle using the money they?d been paid. They found that on average, the neutral group offered to buy the bottle for next to nothing; the sad group?s average starting bid, however, was nearly four times that amount. They also found that the sad group believed their mood didn?t influence the prices they offered.

Combining the two sets of data, the researchers found a link between the sad group?s egos and their essays. The results suggested that the volunteers with the highest self-focus in the sad group tended to buy at a higher price. Speculating on the reason behind this, Cryder and her colleagues assumed that people with high self-esteem in low moods felt devalued. This, they wrote in their paper, ?triggers an implicit desire to enhance the self.?

Unfortunately, people who shop in a mood without realizing they?re being influenced by their feelings can get stuck with the results of their poor shopping decisions.

The solution, according to the researchers, is to have people realize they?re under the influence of such a mood when they?re out shopping. They admit, however, that is often easier said than done.

Retailers who might be delighted at the prospect of a potential increase in sales when selling to sad shoppers take note: your own feelings might change later on when buyers realize they can?t explain why they bought certain things and attempt to return the items.

E-mail the author at massie@massie.com.