Panic-Buying Toilet Paper Is A Bad Habit We Can Break
Once everything settles, the body activates chemicals like dopamine that bring on positive feelings of well-being, rewarding that flight-or-fight response. In this way, the brain powerfully reinforces a key survival instinct.
This sequence of experiences and the brain chemistry behind them may explain why people panic-buy toilet paper.
“With toilet paper, my limbic system starts thinking about a perceived threat to safety,” says Julie Pike, PhD, a psychologist in Chapel Hill, NC, who specializes in anxiety, hoarding, and posttraumatic stress disorder.
She notes that in stockpiling toilet paper, "we avoid a perceived threat and then we are chemically rewarded" with dopamine. A storage closet full of toilet paper after a perceived threat of scarcity -- no matter how unfounded -- brings on that satisfied feeling.
When the Market Shifted
Paper producers make hygiene paper for two markets: the commercial (think: those big rolls of thin paper used in offices, schools, and restaurants) and the consumer (the soft paper you likely use at home). In the spring of 2020, the commercial market plummeted, and the consumer market skyrocketed.
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