Do you come from a long line of “cheapskates”? Some people have a tendency be frugal, while other people tend to enjoy spending a lot of money. Why is this? Is frugality something that a person learns from their relatives, or is there a genetic influence? Studies show that it is due to both, with an emphasis on genetics.
Many of my relatives are quite frugal. Not only is outgrown clothing handed down from one sibling to another, it was also handed down from older cousins to younger cousins. My grandmother loved going to garage sales and yard sales and often felt as though she’d gotten a pretty good deal on the prices of the things she bought there. We are the people who use coupons at the grocery stores, who check the thrift stores first when “new” clothing is needed, and who literally wear something out before we buy a new one.
One might wonder if we are choosing these frugal behaviors because we learned them from older relatives, (who learned them from their parents and grandparents), or, if there could be a genetic reason behind our frugality. It turns out that it is due to a little of both, but the genetic influence is much, much, stronger than the environmental one.
Two separate studies were done that came to the conclusion that there is something going on genetically, and biologically, that influences a person to be frugal. One study was done by marketing professors Itamar Simonson, of Stanford University, and Aner Sela, of the University of Florida. This study involved looking at identical twins. They found that individual consumer preferences are genetically linked, (for products like hybrid cars, movies, jazz,and chocolate).
A person’s preferences are linked to how much “prudence” that person has, genetically speaking. People are either born with a disposition that makes them want to live “in the mainstream”, or “on the edge”, or somewhere in between the two extremes. The more prudent you are, the less interested you are in taking risks, even financial ones.
Another study used brain imaging to help explain the biological mechanism that causes people to want to be frugal. They showed volunteers images of consumer products, followed by the price of the product. People who were frugal had a part of their brain called the insula activate when they saw the prices of the products. The insula is a neural distress center. It fires when people experience something unpleasant. The insula can be triggered by situations where a person feels mistreated by another person, where a person feels socially excluded, or even by a bad smell.
The conclusion is that frugal people actually feel something like physical pain, and definitely feel stress, when they are faced with a situation that involves spending some money. They anticipate this bad feeling, and it makes them even more interested in behaving frugally. Other people, who enjoy spending money, feel no such discomfort. Families share a certain amount of genetics with other members of the family. Perhaps my frugal family is shopping for bargains in order to avoid discomfort.
Image by Michael Pereckas on Flickr