Are you a shopaholic? Do thoughts of death haunt you? A study has found that thoughts of mortality can trigger your buying impulse as it makes you feel better about yourself. Researchers in Canada found that the habits of spendthrifts do not change after contemplating their own mortality. Compulsive shoppers, on the other hand, go out and buy more. The team wanted to test this assumption with anti-consumers - people who resist consumption out of a desire to live simply and with over-consumers - folks who shop till they drop, no matter the season. The researchers did two experiments with 508 participants who were asked to answer questionnaires identifying their tendency to resist consumption. They were then randomly assigned to one of two groups one in the 'death thoughts' group, where participants were asked to describe what they would feel if they were dying. In the control group, participants were asked to report what they would feel if they were submitted to a painful dental procedure. They found that anti-consumers seem to care less about consumption than over-consumers. Afterwards, participants indicated their inclination to purchase a series of products. By comparing participants in each condition, researchers were able to identify individual thoughts of death. They found that in consumers inclined to over-consume, thinking about death made them even more likely to buy