单选题 New science reveals how your brain is hard-wired when it comes to spending—and how you can reboot it.
The choice to spend rather than save reflects a very human—and, some would say, American—quirk: a preference for immediate gratification over future gains. In other words, we get far more joy from buying a new pair of shoes today, or a Caribbean vacation, or an iPhone 4S, than from imagining a comfortable life tomorrow. Throw in an instant-access culture—in which we can get answers on the Internet within seconds, have a coffeepot delivered to our door overnight, and watch movies on demand—and we"re not exactly training the next generation to delay gratification. "Pleasure now is worth more to us than pleasure later," says economist William Dickens of Northeastern University. "We much prefer current consumption to future consumption. It may even be wired into us."
As brain scientists plumb the neurology of an afternoon at the mall, they are discovering measurable differences between the brains of people who save and those who spend with abandon, particularly in areas of the brain that predict consequences, process the sense of reward, spur motivation, and control memory. In fact, neuroscientists are mapping the brain"s saving and spending circuits so precisely that they have been able to stir up the saving and disable the spending in some people. The result: people"s preferences switch from spending like a drunken sailor to saving like a child of the Depression. All told, the gray matter responsible for some of our most crucial decisions is finally revealing its secrets.
Psychologists and behavioral economists, meanwhile, are identifying the personality types and other traits that distinguish savers from spenders, showing that people who aren"t good savers are neither stupid nor irrational—but often simply don"t accurately foresee the consequences of not saving. Rewire the brain to find pleasure in future rewards, and you"re on the path to a future you really want.
In one experiment, neuroeconomist Paul Glimcher of New York University wanted to see what it would take for people to willingly delay gratification. He gave a dozen volunteers a choice: $20 now or more money, from $20.25 to $110, later. On one end of the spectrum was the person who agreed to take $21 in a month—to essentially wait a month in order to gain just $1. In economics-speak, this kind of person has a "flat discount function," meaning he values tomorrow almost as much as today and is therefore able to delay gratification. At the other end was someone who was willing to wait a month only if he got $68, a premium of $48 from the original offer. This is someone economists call a "steep discounter," meaning the value he puts on the future (and having money then) is dramatically less than the value he places on today; when he wants something, he wants it now.

单选题 When it comes to spending, new evidence shows that it ______

单选题 When brain scientists "plumb the neurology of an afternoon at the mall", they ______

单选题 The scientists studying spending habits ______

单选题 If you are rewarded for saving, you are likely to ______

单选题 Neuroeconomist Paul Glimcher wants to find out ______