Financial desperation squeezes the cognitive juice right out of you.<p>In 2013, Harvard researchers did a study of how financial stress affects decision making. Denise Cummins, Ph.D. explains their findings in Psychology Today:<p>&quot;When the cost of [a car] repair was increased to $3,000, a very different picture emerged: The cognitive performance of those at the upper end of the income distribution was unaffected by the increase. But those at the lower end suffered a 40% decline! The authors interpreted this to mean that scarcity impaired people’s ability to think clearly. The threat—even an imagined threat—of a large bill made it difficult for poor people to focus on the cognitive tasks at hand.&quot;<p>Financial stress impedes human thinking &#x2F; problem solving. People get consumed by the short term challenges in front of them, and can’t see the big picture.<p>Sources:
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