The Hidden Psychology of Black Friday - How do shops manipulate us (and make calm aunties fist-fight over PlayStations)?

Black Friday is a contradiction. It's a day where joy and chaos, gratitude and greed collide. It is spectacle that reveals something quintessentially human. Our ability to imbue meaning into arbitrary things. One year it's a target in Buffalo, New York. Two women fought over a discounted blender. Not metaphorical fighting, but with fists and hair pulling. The intervened, not before one year old, you don't even cook. Her accusation hung in the air. Her reminder that objects are never just objects. They are vessels for the lives we imagine ourselves leading. Black Friday didn't begin with stampedes or doorbusters. It began with a traffic jam. In the 1950s, Philadelphia police used the term Black Friday to describe the chaos after Thanksgiving when shoppers and tourists flooded the city. The name "stuck" and retailers rebranded it as the kickoff to the holiday shopping season. But why do we care so much about a sale anyway? Economists call it a scarcity heuristic. The human tendency to overvalue things perceived as rare. Psychologists tie it to FOMO, the fear of missing out. And I think it's something deeper. A sale isn't just a discount, it's permission to dream. A blender isn't just for smoothies. It's for imagining yourself as someone who makes smoothies every morning. A person whose life is as oddly and vibrant as their Instagram feed. Hello and welcome to the Growth Mindset Psychology podcast. With me, your host Sam Webster Harris. We learn about the science of our own minds and from these lessons, hopefully build your own philosophies of what it is to live a life well lived. Today's topic is the psychology of Black Friday. We are creatures of narrative after all and Black Friday is the theatre where those stories unfold. Sometimes with joy, sometimes with chaos. But it is a place where our emotions and our underlying animal instincts and our beautifully unhinged nature can become dramatically exposed. I just want to quickly mention that I wrote and released this episode last year and I really, really enjoyed it. I thought it was both a fun episode with interesting stories whilst also exploring some of the hidden psychology that's used against us. And we get to learn some ideas of how we can improve control of our own choices and not get swept up in the moments of pressure deliberately designed to take our choices off us. The people who listened to it seemed to really like it and I had great feedback, but not many people actually clicked on it because I released it a little late and after Black Friday's happened, people were understandably not wanting to hear more about it. So if you were one of the few people who did listen, I'm sorry to be already releasing it only one year later and if you didn't listen, well you are in for a treat. So let's start at the start. The strange evolution of Black Friday from Traffic Nightmare to Cultural Phenomenon. In the 1950s when police officers in Philadelphia began using the term Black Friday, it was with a mix of dread and dark humour. Every year the day after Thanksgiving they faced unprecedented crowds flowing downtown for the Army Navy football game and early Christmas shopping, creating what one officer described as a perfect storm of human gridlock. The term wasn't meant to be celebratory. It was a collective groan from public servants dealing with what the Philadelphia bulletin in 1961 called a headache that marked the official opening of the Christmas shopping season. Healed a fundamental truth about human existence and our tendency to turn even our moments of abundance into occasions of urgent acquisition. But the biggest plot twist in retail history is how a city's biggest headache became America's favourite shopping holiday. Marketeers, masters of reframing negative narratives saw an opportunity. They understood something fundamental about human nature that we love being part of an origin story, especially one with a redemption arc, so they rewrote the script on Black Friday. It wasn't about chaos anymore, at least supposedly. It was about prosperity, about shop ledgers, tining from red to black as shoppers themselves found amazing deals like hidden treasure. Practically it became the adult version of the Easter Egg chocolate hunt, a story where everybody wins. This rebranding tapped into some core human desires. The need for traditions, it happens every year like clockwork and the desire for transformation. Not only do shops go from financial loss to profit, but shoppers can buy the things that they've dreamed of. What started as crowd control became crowd psychology at its finest. So let's explore the psychology of sales and crack open the psychological playbook that turns rational humans into DLC-king missiles every Black Friday. It is here after all the charged atmosphere of discounted desires that we encounter some of our most profound vulnerabilities and perhaps some of our most touching aspirations. Consider what psychologists call the anchoring effect. Our tendency to judge value not by any absolute measure but by comparison to an initial reference point. When we encounter a code marked down from $500 to $200, we experience not just a mathematical difference but an emotional revelation. The original price becomes a kind of ghost haunting our evaluation of worth and whispering seductive suggestions about value and opportunity. But here's where it gets very interesting. Retailers aren't just playing with prices, they're tapping into our evolutionary circuitry. And our breakdown of psychological triple threat that makes Black Friday so irresistible. Firstly, the scarcity effect. When there's only two left, that triggers the same part of our brain that made our ancestors hoard resources for winter. We're not hoarding mammoth meat anymore, but our brain doesn't know the difference. Then there's FOMO, fear of missing out. Those countdown timers, their digital predators, hunting our primitive fear of missing crucial opportunities. Our ancient ancestors face life and death decisions if they missed out on resources. Our modern brains still can't tell the difference between missing out on a TV deal and missing out on an essential survival resources. We certainly had donically adapt to our environment to make it seem just as scary, but we don't adapt from a point of logic. Thirdly, a most touching of all is what neuroscience reveals about our relationship with anticipated innovation. Our brains release more dopamine in anticipation of a reward than when we receive it. And this illuminates a profound truth about us. We are creatures who live not in the present of possession, but in the future of possibility. The most powerful part about all of this is that these triggers stack up when you combine an anchored price with scarcity and account down timer, you know, original price $1000, now $600, only two left, half an hour before the sale closes. And then you add in some anticipatory reward as well, you've created a perfect storm of psychological triggers that even the most rational minds can struggle to resist. What I find so fascinating is how your psychological principles really mirror ancient human behaviors. When our ancestors spotted a fruit tree at the end of the day with a storm coming in, and they could see only a few ripe fruits left in the upper branches, they had to make split second decisions about whether they tried to climb the tree and risk falling out or getting stuck in the storm to pursue those valuable resources or heading back to camp hungry. Today we've simply replaced fruit trees with flash sails, but our neural hardware remains remarkably unchanged. In this light, the cue outside of store on the morning of a Black Friday sale is not just a line of consumers, but a collection of humans who are animals united in their embrace of potential. Each mind alive with the chemistry of anticipation and each heart beating to the rhythm of what if. So now we've understood more of the psychology, let's look at some case studies. In 2011, a woman in Walmart pepper sprayed other customers crowding round to get an Xbox and injured 20 people in the process. In 2008, a Walmart employee was killed in New York when a crowd of roughly 2000 shoppers broke down their doors and trampled him. The store had advertised a 50 inch plasma TV for $798. In 2016, two women in Charlotte got into a fist fight over the last instant pot at Walmart. Neither woman actually needed an instant pot. In post incident interviews, one admitted she already owned one, while the other confessed that she wasn't even sure what it did. And it's not just America. In 2015, in the shopping centre in Manchester, UK, hundreds of otherwise sensible adults found themselves locked in combat over discounted bed linens and three women were even arrested. In an unrelated incident on the other side of the same shopping mall, two men got into a fight over a TV on sale in Tesco. They dropped the TV in their fight at another man walked off with it. I could go on, but I think you get the point. It does make us wonder. How do ordinary people, parents, teachers, neighbours become such instruments of tragedy in their pursuit of discounted toys, electronics and even bed linen. Among these crowds are individual people who waited hours in the cold, many probably thinking about making their children's Christmas wishes come true, or finally being able to afford something that had been out of reach. None of them intended harm. Most were probably kind and decent individuals when their rational brains were online and functioning. Some factors that contribute to a more idiotic behaviours are firstly the individuation in crowds we literally lose our sense of individual identity. Others show that people in Black Friday crowds show similar behavioural patterns to sports fans at Rally Games. Then there's competition triggering. We tailor intentionally create conditions that trigger our competitive instincts. We don't even have time to evaluate if we want the thing when we see people buying it as limited quantities as time pressure, and if it looks like it's going to sell out, we just wanted anyway, and people start physically clustering over things and it activates what anthropologists call resource competition programming. Then there's also social contagion, emotions, spread, literally through crowds like viruses. One person's anxiety can infect hundreds of people within minutes. On top of all this, I really think there's some good old polyvagal theory going on. The fact that everything we've spoken about so far is about putting us in a heightened emotional state. We aren't thinking in this low and rational, easy, relaxed manner. Our drenolin is fully pumped up, we're in a fight or flight mode, and that shuts off our advanced thinking, and it turns us into a much more primitive state. But before you give up on humanity, we aren't just a bunch of terrible heathens when put under pressure. In 2020, in a Walmart, hundreds of people bought layaway items where they paid an initial deposit and would only receive their item once they finally paid the full sum. One kind donor paid off the full amount for all the shoppers there, and hundreds of shoppers were able to have their gifts for free in time for Christmas. Another interesting piece of news, you might have heard of Black Friday's Little Brother Cyber Monday, and hopefully you've heard of its kinder cousin, Giving Tuesday. In 2022, Giving Tuesday generated $3.1 billion in donations alone. But I was hoping to find a lot more stories of kindness to create a nice narrative here, and even out the episode a bit. But I really had to scrape the bucket compared to the fountain of headlines of dumb fisticuffs that have blown up every year around the world. The internet does seem to be a wash with negativity in general, but there are a few tales of kindness out there. This might be a reflection of just how the internet works as a whole and how much of our new system is just about the worst aspects of humanity. Personally, I've definitely seen kind people let old people to the front of the queue on Black Friday. Or in my teenage years, I used to work as a lifeguard, and we regularly had people returning lost while it's that they found in the changing rooms, and I could only assume some of the same things happen elsewhere. So whether Black Friday truly is the WrestleMania we see online remains a bit of a mystery. I did just mention Cyber Monday, and that's going to be part of our new theme as we cover the transition to online shopping that's happened over the past decades. Personally, I used to enjoy my walks through the winter air in the city, the first frosts having settled in the UK, a smell of roasted chestnuts lingering in the air, the Christmas lights have turned on, a day out shopping, exploring with your friends and family, time felt more abundant, you could finish the day with a movie. Now, 15 years later, I do most of my Black Friday shopping in my pajamas on my laptop. In 2002, according to Adobe Analytics, Americans spent 9.1 billion on Black Friday online purchases at $6.3 million per minute. In 2010, online sales made up just 9% of Black Friday's spending. It's now over 50%. And why? Well, there's the friction factor. Physical shopping has natural pause points, driving to stores, waiting at line, carrying bags, island shopping, removes these friction points and our brains, love it. So these show that we actually spend 12 to 18% more when shopping online due to produce transaction pain. Then there's the infinity loon. Remember how stores used to close or only have a set amount of items in their set amount of physical space? Well, online shopping created what behavioral economists call endless ills. Amazon alone lists over 350 million products. That triggers a feeling you may relate to of the one more tab effect. We keep searching because the perfect deal might be just one click away. Finally, we have the social proof paradox. In a store, you see actual people buying things, but on live, you see 12 people are looking at their items right now and there are only two left. They just talk about the difference. We're more urgency because we can't verify it, but we assume it's true. As opposed to in the physical shop, we know it's only just that one item that's selling out like crazy and nothing else. Mobile shopping has really amplified these effects as well. In 2022, 48% of online black Friday purchases were made on people's phones and data shows that peak shopping hours have shifted to 10pm to 2am. A store never closes and our brain never fully turns off. We are literally shopping whilst we are asleep. What's really point about this shift to me is how it reflects our broader movement towards what sociologists call networked individualism. We are more connected than ever through our devices. A way to participate in global commerce within President of E's and of course social media. Yet we are increasingly isolated in our actual physical experiences. And I'll talk more on that later, but we will find out more after the break. And it is not lost on me the beautiful sense of irony that we may well be about to hear about some black Friday deals from the lovely and wonderful advertisers who support the show and keep it running so I can create content like this for you. Please stay tuned. Now let's talk about money and shopping. Sale-induced purchasing disorder. This is defined as a preoccupation with buying, by more than more can afford or unneeded items, maybe shopping for longer durations of time than originally intended, resulting in mark, distress or interference with social and occupational functioning. Now compulsive buying affects between 5 and 15% of the population. But in the same way that more and more of us are developing issues with our attention span that increasingly relate to the symptoms of ADHD, I think more and more of us can relate to some of those symptoms I've described. In the end, online shopping is a little bit like a casino. Of course for gambling addicts a casino is really bad. But even if you're not a gambling addict, you can still very much get burned by the casino. The average American household carries $9,333 in credit card debt. During the 2022 holiday season, 35% of shoppers opened a new credit card for black Friday purchases. Transunion now registers 1.1 trillion in credit card debt across America. Yet, despite all of the debts being created to secure these bargains, a 2022 survey found that 60% of black Friday purchases go unused or are regretted within six months. 60% of them. But perhaps the most daunting statistic isn't even about money at all. In 2022, UPS alone delivered 32 million packages per day during the peak holiday season. Each one of these packages requires cardboard, plastic, fuel for the delivery, a cascade of environmental costs that we really consider whilst hunting for deals, and the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that household waste increases by 25% between thanksgiving in New Year's Day, adding about 1 million tonnes per week to our landfills. When we see a fashion retailer offering t-shirts for $5 or even $2 each, we don't necessarily see the true price. The cotton farmers working in increasingly extreme conditions due to climate change, the factory workers earning subsistence wages, and the mountains literally are unsolved clothing that is decaying until you desert landfills, estimated now to be over 66,000 tonnes. That's double what it was from just three years ago. And this is certainly a darker side of the deals. Not that they cost us money that we don't have, or that they damage our environment, but that they promise to form a fulfilment that they can never deliver. In our rush to save money, we risk losing something far more precious, our capacity to find contentment outside the cycle of consumption in acquisition. When I see all these numbers, I'm reminded of something my grandmother used to say that the cheapest things often cost the most. She may have been talking about poorly made trains that needed frequent replacing, but her wisdom extends to our entire discount driven economy. We are all paying a price much higher than what's displayed on our receipts. It does genuinely affect our mental health and our ability to understand what even makes us happy. Do you know what kills business security besides hackers? Well, complexity. Companies buy five different tools, none of them talk to each other, and suddenly UIT person spends more time managing security than actually securing anything. 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What's fascinating is how Black Friday has mutated as it has spread. In Brazil they have a saying, "Black Friday, a pun reflecting the common practice of retailers artificially inflating prices before the sale." Brazilian consumer protection agencies now maintain a website called "qual-affirter", meaning "what deal", and that tracks prices months before Black Friday to catch these deceptions. In France, where the term "Black Friday" remains stubbornly untranslated, despite the French government's usual insistence on French alternatives. Black Friday has arrived like a cultural immigrant, speaking only in English. Here, the phenomenon that Black Friday has sparked a philosophical crisis of sorts. How does a nation that prides itself on "considered consumption" and "joy de vivre"? Reconciled itself with the frenzy of American-style bargain hunting. An answer emerged in 2019 where environmental groups "we branded it as green Friday" and they encouraged people to repair items rather than buy new ones. The most telling transformation happened in China, where singles day on November the 11th have become the world's largest shopping event. The date is chosen because the number one resembles a bear stick, which in Chinese is slang for an unmarried man. The four ones of November the 11th represent the single people demographic. Incredibly in 2022, AdiBaba and JD.com reported combined singles day sales of 139 billion, dwarfing America's Black Friday numbers. The whole event feels like a certification stamp of our increasing loneliness and isolation in the modern world. Now, whether you love Black Friday or hated, it does teach us about nature and who we are, year round. The principles that drive Black Friday behaviour aren't unique to shopping, they are fundamental to human nature. We're just seeing them amplified under these fluorescent lights and time pressure. Behavioral economist Daniel Arioli pointed out how it reveals our fundamental irrationality about value. We can spend hours trying to save $40 on a TV, but we won't spend 10 minutes filling out the right forms to save $40 on our utility bills. We're not just bad at maths, we're bad at math in a predictable human way. The behavioural economist Richard Taler's research shows how we maintain multiple mental accounts, treating a $50 saving on a TV differently to a $50 salary increase, despite their mathematical equivalence. This isn't just mere irrationality, it's evidence of how we imbue money with meaning beyond its numerical value. When we chase deals, we're not just seeking savings, we're seeking the ancient satisfaction of the successful hunt. The validation of our cleverness, a story that we can tell of our own consumer prowess. But of course it's not only value and resources that we seek, our need for belonging also manifests even in these supposedly individualistic pursuits. Anthropological studies of Black Friday lines do reveal fascinating micro communities conform spontaneously among strangers. People who hours ago were unknown to each other can begin to share resources, create informal rules of conduct and establish temporary but meaningful bonds. And in this we can see the eternal human struggle between our competitive and cooperative instincts. In our modern temples of retail, we do encounter the same fundamental human needs that our ancestors grappled with, the desire for security, the yearning for status, the tension between individual gain and group solidarity. The goods might be new but the underlying patterns of human behaviour do remain remarkably consistent. All in all, Black Friday, heightened our rationality and can create time blindness to our debts and loss of sanity in our desires. Before you buy a waffle iron that's 60% off, it's worth working out if you're ever going to make waffles more than once a year, and if you want to pay $40 for some more junk filling up your cupboards. If you're tempted to buy something, the best thing is often to forget about it for a week and see if you really need it. Half the deals in Black Friday aren't even real and are just imagined discounts to create the perception of value. I began this exploration of Black Friday thinking about those frosty mornings I had as a teenager walking through a city to my sixth-born college where I first witnessed crowds of shoppers waiting for stores to open. I remember thinking how strange humans can be, but now looking back, I see something different in that memory. What I initially saw is mindless consumption was actually deeply messily human. In this episode we've witnessed both our capacity for frenzy and our ability to form instant communities. We're seeing how digital convenience has been replacing physical connection. How the dopamine rush of clicking add to cart has supplanted the shared excitement of waiting in line with strangers. The deals may or may not have gotten better, but something intangible has been lost. We can abstractly talk about the billions upon billions of dollars of purchases, but within that abstraction, millions of individual stories play out every time. Parents trying to make Christmas magical on a tight budget. Small businesses hoping to compete with retail giants. Warehouse workers picking and packing at unprecedented speeds and algorithms learning our desires better than we know them ourselves. Black Friday, in the end, isn't really just about the deals. It's about who we become in pursuit of them. It embodies our eternal contradictions, our desires to save money and to spend it, our need to participate in collective experiences, even as we pursue individual gains, and how we navigate abundance and scarcity. Perhaps that's why I find myself still thinking about those mornings of the teenager and the fights that inevitably erupt every year. Not because Black Friday shows us at our worst, but because it shows us as we are, complicated, contradictory, capable of both mindless consumption and mindful connection. In our pursuit of deals, we do reveal our deeper pursuits, for belonging, for security, for a sense that we are smart enough or lucky enough to beat the system. All in all, I can only really give Black Friday one and a half stars. If you personally know anyone who is prone to pulling people's hair out to get a blender that they're never going to use, please do me and them a favour by sharing this episode with them as it's how the show grows. And on that, remember this year that it's not about what you have, but who you are. Thank you so much for listening. Your consistency to reach the end of an episode is legendary. But when we learn things, it's important to reflect, so I politely invite you to take a pause, rifle through the biggest ideas you just heard. So here's your opportunity to hit pause and have a think. Okay, did you wrestle with some insights? Information doesn't stick when we race from one podcast to the next without using our brain to play with the knowledge. So here's another go at a pause. Alrighty, I'll let you off to continue with your life now. If you have any ideas or feedback for the show, I'm always interested to hear from you. And other than that, please stay curious.