I'm dubious. I haven't read the study they take this conclusion from, but it does not accord with my experience of the world. Your brain shuts down after 40 minutes in a supermarket, really? Anyway, it's about supermarkets and not malls, and most of the other evidence in this article is about casinos. Thin soup.
Sociology studies are such a joke.
So in other words, the study probably took people from a mall or supermarket after a set amount of time and MRI'd them in exchange for $25 or something. I really doubt they measured anything relevant here.
fMRI studies are largely bullshit in the best of times. Using it to study an abstract effect is doubly so.
> Some people like to use the salmon study as proof that fMRI is woo, but this isn't the case, it's actually a study to show the importance of correcting your stats.
This study, for example, is quite telling:
I guess I’m in a minority, I can’t remember the last time I went to a mall to buy anything.