Overconsumption core: how our brains drive us to consume

February 11, 2025

Written by Emma Fischer

For those of us plugged into social media, we’ve seen our fair share of influencers advertising items from paid partnerships or people posting huge hauls. Whether it’s Stanley cups, skincare, fast fashion or beyond: sometimes it can feel like somebody is constantly trying to sell us something, and admittedly, it works sometimes. What is it about social media advertising that pushes us to want more than we could even use? Understanding what is happening in our brains when we feel the urge to keep buying can help us curb our desires.

“Overconsumption core” is a term coined on social media to describe buying and having an excessive number of products. It is usually marketed as “trendy” to buy in excess, making us think we have to have these things. There are a lot of factors that play into the desire to have the newest items and keep up with the latest trends, but some of the main contributors to this buying behavior are the way shopping acts on our brain’s reward systems, and how brands and influencers take advantage of the societal pressure to fit in to push a product.

Buyer’s reward

We’ve all felt that rush that comes from buying something online, but where does that feeling come from? The neuroscience of overconsumption is closely related to addiction. When you do something you enjoy, chemicals in your brain work to reinforce when something feels good so you crave that good feeling and want to do it again. One of the major chemicals that does this is called dopamine. Dopamine is released in brain regions that are active when you want or crave something, which contributes to these feelings of desire.¹ One of the main brain areas involved in addiction where we see this dopamine release is the dorsal striatum. This region is active when someone is engaging in a behavior that is rewarding to them, including behaviors like online shopping, and plays an important role in addiction.¹ 

We often see reward talked about in the context of more basic behaviors like eating or having sex, but for some people, things like shopping can also hijack this system to make buying feel so good that they feel like they can’t resist. Some scientists have done work to show that shopping can work on this reward system to become an addiction.² One group of researchers scanned the brains of participants when shown images related to shopping and found that, in people who have a shopping addiction, the dorsal striatum is more active than in control participants without this addiction.² These individuals also reported feeling higher levels of craving, which is driven by dopamine release, than the control participants when shown shopping-related images. This suggests that the desire to overconsume may have a foundation in addiction.

For more on where shopping addiction comes from, check out this article. 

Social influence

Aside from the rush we get after buying something we saw online, there are other, less obvious things going on in our brains that make us want something. One thing that really drives overconsumption is societal pressure to fit in, which is particularly strong on social media. Humans rely so much on a sense of social belonging and social status, so it makes sense that we look to others to help guide our decisions and choose trends to follow.³ This is part of what makes influencers so attractive to brands for the promotion of their products. Companies know that consumers look to influencers for shopping inspiration, so they use neuroscience to inform their decisions about what kind of content they want influencers to create to promote their products. 

In order to look more closely at what parts of an influencer post draw people in and convince them to buy, some neuroscientists in the field of consumer marketing have conducted research on what kinds of influencers (more or less than 10,000 followers) and what kind of messages (picture-based or text-based) are more likely to catch a reader’s attention.⁴ These researchers used technology to track eye movement of volunteer consumers while also recording signals from the brain using a technology that measures electrical activity in the brain called EEG. EEG, or electroencephalogram, can be really useful for tracking the precise timing of activation in a particular brain region.⁵ In this study, researchers found that pictures, particularly those of an influencer using a promoted product, capture the most attention from viewers, as well as a short and informative text alongside the picture. The neuroscientists also found that follower count doesn’t capture much of the viewer’s attention. This kind of research shows how carefully influencers and companies work to promote their products in a way that maximizes our attention to their content.

If all of this sounds like you’re completely at the will of influencers and companies, don’t worry: overconsumption involves a conscious decision to hit the “buy” button, and that decision is still completely up to you. Being aware of the influence social media can have on our desires, especially when that desire is to buy things we don’t need, helps us be more mindful of the impact we have on those around us and the environment when we shop, so shop sustainably when you can!

References

1. Everitt, B. J., & Robbins, T. W. (2016). Drug addiction: updating actions to habits to compulsions ten years on. Annual review of psychology, 67(1), 23-50.

2. Trotzke, P., Starcke, K., Pedersen, A., & Brand, M. (2021). Dorsal and ventral striatum activity in individuals with buying‐shopping disorder during cue‐exposure: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Addiction Biology, 26(6), e13073.

3. Brewer, M. B. (2007). The importance of being we: human nature and intergroup relations. American psychologist, 62(8), 728.

4. Pozharliev, R., Rossi, D., & De Angelis, M. (2022). A picture says more than a thousand words: Using consumer neuroscience to study instagram users’ responses to influencer advertising. Psychology & Marketing, 39(7), 1336-1349.

5. da Silva, F. L. (2013). EEG and MEG: relevance to neuroscience. Neuron, 80(5), 1112-1128.

Cover photo from Macrovector on Freepik.