In their book Scarcity, Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir blame the apparently irrational act of taking out a payday loan (and taking out a second one to pay off the first, etc.) by poor people on the mindset induced by scarcity–that is, being poor makes it difficult to think about anything but getting money, the sooner the better. An interesting proposition.

In our research, we found some indications that talking about one’s financial straights leads to smarter decision-making, which would mean that if Mullainathan and Shafir are correct about the tunnel vision imposed by poverty, then talking to another person about the issue counteracts scarcity’s tendency to focus the mind on the getting of abundance ASAP.