In recent years, there has been a massive shift in how people carry out their transactions. As more people are preferring plastic cards to cash, the popularity of the cashless trend is only growing.
While cards are often blamed for triggering overspending and increased consumption, it is hard to argue that they have become a more convenient way to make payments. A new study has provided a neural explanation for the preference.
Credit cards trigger the same chemical reaction in a human brain that is observed in those people suffering from addictive behaviour, like using drugs, and therefore may cause overspending, a study published in Scientific Reports suggested.
The research was conducted by a team of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The team studied brain scans of different groups of participants: those who used personal credit cards to make everyday purchases and those who stuck to cash. And, according to the study, cash purchases do not stimulate the same “reward networks” in the brain.
