The best remedy for sadness is not shopping, a recent study warns. The so-called retail therapy has become a common practice these days, but that poses a serious threat to one’s wallet, so if you’re sad and feel like shopping, don’t!

According to the study that will be published in the June 2008 number of Psychological Science, sadness leads to ego-centrist thinking. In other words, a sad person tends to transform into a shopaholic, willing to spend extra money on the same item than neutral-emotion people would buy for a lot less.

“It is the combination of sadness and self-focus that drives the effect, and it turns out that sadness leads to an increase in self-focus,” said Cynthia Cryder, co-author to the study, AFP quotes. “What we think is going on is that sad and self-focused people are feeling pretty bad about themselves and have a decreased valuation, and one way to do this is by acquiring material goods.”

In an ideal situation, when you know you’re sad, you should avoid making decisions and spending money. Sounds simple? Unfortunately, it is not. Most people don’t even know they’re sad, the study shows, and they are not aware that their feelings influence their decisions.

Dr. Carole Lieberman, also studying the compulsive shopping disorder, said: “The way I discovered it was because I was treating a lot of eating disordered patients at the time, and found that after I cured their eating disorder, they developed a compulsive shopping disorder,” abcnews.go.com reported.  

What to do? The study, which was released Friday at the annual meeting if the Society for Social and Personality Psychology, showed that volunteers asked to watch a tragic video were more likely to offer up to three times more money for a simple bottle of water than volunteers who watched a neutral clip. The solution: well, for starters, don’t go shopping! And if you can’t help it, it’s probably better to see a therapist.