When you're sad, it's not just your waistline you need to watch.
Unhappy people are also more likely to make foolish money
decisions, new research shows. Sad people will often forgo extra
money further down the road in order to get less money right
away, according to a study conducted by professors at Harvard,
Columbia and University of California Riverside. When offered
smaller amounts of cash immediately versus bigger sums three
months later, sad people accepted 13 percent to 34 percent less
money today than their not-so-sad counterparts did -- just to
avoid the wait. "The idea is that when you're sad, you want to
accelerate consumption -- it's all about getting money sooner,"
said Ye Li, co-author of the report and an assistant professor
of management at University of California, Riverside. The
researchers conducted a series of experiments in which about 600
participants were assigned to a neutral, disgusted or sad
condition. To induce sadness, participants were asked to view a
three-minute clip from the m