Having set up mamabella because we know just how much makeup, skincare, and self-care improves our mood, it’s no surprise that research has found shopping for beauty products greatly improves happiness levels.
Using the Brief Mood Introspection Scale (BMIS) as a base, which is a scale that analyses people’s moods, a team from money.co.uk surveyed more than 2,000 men and women. They asked each person to record the intensity of 10 different emotions before making an online purchase. They then repeated this after payment had been made.
These emotions ranged from happy, satisfied, excited, optimistic, and interested as well as nervous, sad, gloomy, worried, and frustrated.
Based on these findings, the study discovered that buying an eyeshadow palette increased happiness by as much as 62%.
Buying perfume, and nail polish, both increased happiness by 59%, followed by buying lipstick, which made the participants feel 54% happier. Skincare purchases made people 52% happier.
Out of all the purchases made, however, buying a houseplant boosted people’s mood the most. This increased positive emotions by 67%, followed by games consoles (66%) and trainers (64%).
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The full top 20 list is as follows:
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“Online shopping has the ability to make us happy through several different mechanisms,” said psychologist and wellbeing consultant, Lee Chambers. “Firstly, even in a world of plenty, we are still evolutionarily designed to consider scarcity. Because of this, acquiring new items, especially when discounted or limited, tends to make us happy, the feeling we have satisfied a need and potentially averted a future threat.
“Shopping is also an exercise in control. We select from millions of items precisely what we want, and especially in the uncertain times we live in, we know we will get exactly what we have purchased, and it will be delivered straight to us. This control of selection and guarantee of receipt is powerful, as it becomes a defined event. We also build a level of expectation and anticipation from the moment we press the purchase button, as we believe we now have ownership over the item but have a delay until it is with us physically.”
There is also a physiological response from shopping. It has been linked with changes in the nucleus accumbens region of the brain. This region is responsible for releasing dopamine and motivating us to repeat the behaviour.
To work out the percentage improvements in positive emotions, each participant’s response was allocated a number of points based on how happy they were. For example, if they said they “definitely” felt happy, this observation was given 50 points. If they “definitely did not feel” an emotion, it was allocated 10.
The opposite method was used when analysing negative emotions. “Definitely” feeling an emotion scored 10 points, while not feeling it scored 50.
Participants recorded an average score of 287 out of the total 500 before making a purchase, which was used as a baseline throughout the study for comparison purposes, to see how much happiness levels increased by, on average, after buying something online.
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Victoria is founder and editor-in-chief of mamabella, freelance journalist and Mum. She has a passion for empowering people to feel beautiful whatever their age, size, skin type and budget
