Recent studies conducted by researchers at Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon might go a long way in explaining our spending habits or in the case of the current economic downturn, our penny-pinching ways. Apparently, during every purchase we make there is an emotional tug of war taking place in two distinct parts of our brain that determines if we’re going to spend money or not. The study involved imaging shoppers’ brains while they contemplated these decisions. Jonah Lehrer, editor at large for Seed Magazine and author of “How We Decide,” explains:
They discovered that when subjects were first exposed to the [...]




