But is he salivating?
In certain situations, people actually salivate when they desire material things, like money and sports cars, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.
“In multiple languages, the terms hunger and salivation are used metaphorically to describe desire for non-food items,” writes author David Gal (Northwestern University). “But will people actually salivate when they desire material things?”
The answer, Gal found, is yes. In one study, for example, Gal examined whether people salivated in response to money. “Merely being exposed to the concept of money has been shown to have dramatic effects on behavior, and it has even been argued that money can be conceptualized as a drug in that it imitates the action of biological incentives in driving behavior,” Gal writes. In the experiment, the author measured salivation by having participants put cotton dental rolls in their mouths while they gazed at pictures of money. He later weighed the rolls to measure the amount of saliva.
Before they viewed money, however, Gal primed the participants to feel powerful or to feel that they lacked power. “The main result of the experiment was that participants salivated to money (relative to baseline), but only when they were in a low-power state,” Gal writes. “This suggests that people salivate to non-food items when those are items are desired to fulfill a highly active goal.”
Next, Gal wondered whether men would salivate to high-end sports cars. Instead of looking at their perceived power, he induced some of the men to have a “mating goal,” because prior research has shown that men who want to impress women purchase conspicuous luxury goods. Gal showed the men photos of attractive women and asked them to choose one they would like to date. Gal asked the other group of men to ponder a visit to the barber. The men with the active mating goal salivated more at images of high-end sports cars than the men who had been prompted to imagine getting a haircut.
“Why do people salivate to money and to sports cars?” Gal asks. “One possibility is the increasingly well-established finding that all objects of desire, whether biological or non-biological, activate the same general reward system in the brain. Salivation might merely be the consequence of the activation of this general reward system.”
Every year about this time, on Black Friday in the U.S., the day after Thanksgiving that traditionally begins the holiday shopping season, early-morning consumers stand in long lines eager to purchase some sought after prize. From the outside, it looks as if these holiday shoppers can’t wait to plunk down their cash, but University of Michigan Marketing Professor Scott Rick says consumers often behave differently than they would ideally like to behave.
Couples who score well on a simple test of numeracy ability accumulate more wealth by middle age than couples who score poorly on such a test, according to a new study of married couples in the United States.
Do you like to do good things for other people? If so, your genes might be responsible for this. At least, the results of a study conducted by researchers of the University of Bonn suggest this. According to the study, a minute change in a particular gene is associated with a significantly higher willingness to donate. People with this change gave twice as much money on average to a charitable cause as did other study subjects. 
The bankers who brought the global economy to its knees two years ago may have enjoyed the sensation of losing hundreds of billions of pounds and plunging the world into recession, according to an academic at Cardiff University.
As any nine-to-fiver will testify, a new paycheck brings with it a familiar sense of freedom, albeit one that dwindles in pace with the balance in one’s bank account. But, it’s not the checking account size that influences consumer behavior; rather, it’s the time that has elapsed since payday, according to a new study.
It is possible to buy happiness after all: when you spend money on others, according to researchers at the University of British Columbia and the Harvard Business School.
With dogged determination we lie, rob, borrow, gamble and sometimes work too, in the hope of boosting our income. So zealous is our pursuit of money, it’s as if we think it will somehow make us happier, the British Psychology Society reports.. Strangely enough, whilst psychologists and economists have conducted numerous studies showing that the relationship between income and happiness is weak, only one prior study has asked what lay people really believe about money and happiness (and this was focused on middle-income, working women). 
Men and women with more testosterone like to be in charge, the British Psychological Society reports. Indeed, they can find it stressful and uncomfortable when denied the status that they crave. Similarly, people low in testosterone find it uncomfortable to be placed in positions of authority. An intriguing new study has built on these earlier findings, showing a mismatch between testosterone-level and status is associated with group functioning. Groups made up of people whose status in the group doesn’t match their testosterone level tend to have less collective confidence (or "collective efficacy" in the psychological jargon). This could be important given that prior investigations have shown that groups with higher collective efficacy perform better.
Most Americans probably have cocaine in your wallet, purse, or pocket. Sound unlikely or outrageous? Think again! In what researchers describe as the largest, most comprehensive analysis to date of cocaine contamination in banknotes, scientists are reporting that cocaine is present in up to 90 percent of paper money in the United States, particularly in large cities such as Baltimore, Boston, and Detroit. The scientists found traces of cocaine in 95 percent of the banknotes analyzed from Washington, D.C., alone.
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