The Psychology of Black Friday

On Thursday Americans will gather around the table with their families to share a Thanksgiving meal and offer their reasons for being thankful this season: good health, loving families, a found job, and for the abundance of calories spread before them. But as soon as they finish savoring that last morsel of pumpkin pie, the mood will change. Thoughts will turn from peace and harmony to the chaos that will come the following morning. Americans will develop their shopping strategy as if they are heading into battle. Even the name bestowed upon this day evokes feelings of anxiety, intensity, and just plain crazy: Black Friday.

Black Friday is an American phenomenon when retailers open at unprecedented hours to offer equally unprecedented deals on consumer goods. Retailers hope to be “in the black” and profitable after this day. Black Friday is a day when the rules of shopping and etiquette fall by the wayside and the shoppers never disappoint the rest of us with their determination and wild behavior. 

When I was young, the malls opened at 7am the day after Thanksgiving to take advantage of the holiday and jumpstart the Christmas shopping season. This year retailers are opening at, and I’m not kidding, midnight. Can we not let the turkey and stuffing digest before we head out to shop? Why is Old Navy opening at 3am? What must you purchase that is worth getting up in the middle of the night?

There are reasons why retailers are opening earlier and earlier each year, and it all has to do with getting you to spend your hard-earned dough. Each store wants to be the first one open in order to GET YOUR MONEY FIRST. There is no time to shop around on Black Friday. Most door-buster deals like $3 appliances at Target are only good for so long. You aren’t going to check out one store at 3am then circle back later; the deals will be done. Retailers know that once you are in the store, you will make a purchase.

Secondly, retailers will be using the Scarcity Effect to lure you in. By only offering limited numbers of discount items like HDTVs, or limiting the sale prices for a certain amount of time, they make you feel like if you aren’t there when the doors open, you will miss out. No one wants to be that parent with the disappointed kid on Christmas morning.

Thirdly, retailers are counting on you to get caught up in the mob mentality. Many people think it will be exciting to be in the middle of mayhem and curiosity will drag them out of bed with a Turkey hangover to see what it’s all about. Once you get in the crowd who is anxiously awaiting the mall cop to open the doors, you, too, will begin to think that you must have what everyone else came for, whether you need it or not.

Black Friday is designed to get you to spend as much as your money as possible. So stay focused, stick to your list, and steer clear of anyone willing to take down women and children with their shopping cart.

Personally, I love a great deal. I rarely pay full price for anything. But I am not willing to get elbowed in the face for a good deal. I have not participated in Black Friday, nor do I see myself doing so in the near future. I love Christmas shopping, but without the stress. I will wait until the following week. Until then, I will be at home in my elastic-waist pants enjoying the leftovers.

What Makes a Rainbow?

I obsessed about rainbows as a little girl. Rainbow stickers, rainbow shoelaces, and who remembers Rainbow Brite? I drew rainbows over and over, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, with puffy white clouds on each end. They adorned my book covers in elementary school and hung in my window as shrinky-dinks. Rainbows are one of the most beloved icons of a girl’s childhood, right up there with hearts and unicorns. As a young girl, rainbows were magical. Even today it’s a little exciting to see one emerge after it rains. Rainbows are rare and fleeting, so catching a glimpse of one is truly special. Unless you live in Hawaii. On my honeymoon there were rainbows in the sky everyday. It is the rainbow state.

My vague understanding of rainbows is that rain + sun = rainbow and something about light and prisms. So, I decided to find out what causes the spectacular array of color in the sky.

Rainbows appear through a process called refraction. This is when light bends as it passes from one medium to another. In the case of rainbows, light is passing from the air into rain, and then back into the air once again. The light bends because it passes through water at a slower speed than it passes through air.

Another way to illustrate refraction is when you are pushing one of those giant car carts at the grocery store and one of the wheels hits the corner of a Goldfish display. One wheel slows down while the other side of the cart continues at full speed, causing the direction of the cart to bend (once momentum builds in those massive carts, they are impossible to stop and I have taken down more than one display. But I digress...). The cart travels at one speed on the floor and at another speed when pushing through a cardboard display.

Why do we see so many colors in rainbow? Light is actually composed of different colored light: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet (remember Roy G. Biv?). The colors have different wavelengths and thus bend at different angles when refracted. Red has the longest wavelength and bends the least, whereas violet has the shortest wavelength and bends the most. That is why the colors of a rainbow always appear in the same order.

How is color a wavelength, you ask? I asked myself the same question. Visible light lies on the Electromagnetic Spectrum, along with radio waves and infra-red light. Visible light is the portion of the spectrum that is visible to the naked eye. Below is a diagram to illustrate:

So, when sunlight passes through a raindrop or another substance such as a prism, the light bends. The various colors that make up light bend at different angles, creating a beautiful arc of color.

Why do rainbows form an arc? Rainbows technically are full circles but we don’t see the circle because of the earth. The extent of the rainbow that we see depends on the position of the sun. The higher the sun, the less rainbow we see. The longest rainbow will be when the sun is close to the horizon, such as at sunset, and the rainbow will be a semi-circle over the sun.

So the next time your children shriek with delight, “Look! A rainbow!”, you will be able to help them understand how the rainbow came to be. You can make a rainbow in your house in the experiment below.

Experiment:

Click here to learn how you and your children can make a rainbow with water, a mirror, and a flashlight.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum