Coulda woulda shoulda. The modern woman’s mournful cry!
Last year, during the deep freeze of the global recession, Dr. David Lewis, a British neurologist, got a glimpse into how our brains react when we want the things we don’t actually need. He chose 36 men and women, all professionals with fairly cushy incomes, and wired them up to eye-response technology and quantitative electroencephalography. He showed them images of luxury goods, among them Cartier jewellery, Gucci handbags, Jimmy Choo shoes, Harley-Davidson bikes and Mercedes-Benz cars.
At first, glorious dopamine zapped through their neural pathways, but there was also something troubling that Lewis hadn’t seen in similar tests conducted before this recession: stress. Pleasure-filled at first, the measured physiological responses indicated negative emotions in both the insular cortex (where we process emotions) and the prefrontal cortex (where we weigh the good and the bad and separate right from wrong). The subjects linked a kind of shame and revulsion to the extravagance. “They are conflicted [about the product],” explains Lewis, “and there is less motivation to buy it.” In other words, they felt guilty.
It’s a good guilt—in a way. Lewis, along with other scientists who study neural circuitry and emotional responses, says that the self-punishing reaction is as much about a moral objection (“Wanting these shoes is gross”) as it is about the fear that buying them will lead to personal ruin. In another sense, the guilt is illogical: Consuming high-end stuff, if you can afford it—which these people could—wouldn’t make the recession worse. Quite the contrary, actually. And was their desire for luxury enough reason to feel revolted?
There’s the guilty conscience of lying to your mother, cheating on your spouse or behaving criminally—this healthy guilt separates us from sociopaths. But then there’s
an insidious sort that lies and manipulates on its own accord: It suggests that feeling rotten leads to moral virtue.
Learn more about the guilt generation on the next page...
