As the holidays roll around entire shopping experiences are influenced and changed by the dropping prices and unrelenting consumers tearing through the aisles and racks. Full racks become empty, stores look almost barren at closing time, and shoppers become ruthless.

There you are; November 24. You’ve had your turkey dinner and chatted with family for hours, but now it’s approaching. With deals worth fighting for and tempting late hour prices you lose sleep for, it’s the infamous black friday.

On this day, shoppers are merciless and will stop at nothing to get that toy their child is hoping will be under the tree and search for a crazy deal on that watch their spouse has had their eye on for months. What is it about the human condition that makes people feel the need to deprive themselves of sleep and tear through malls to get the best deals?

Studies show that a mixture of pressure and competition lead to a certain type of anxiety that interferes with simple decision making skills. Human brains think quicker and tend to make split decisions when feeling the stress from crowds, time crunches, uncommon sales and ultimate exhaustion.

Not only does the human brain effect holiday purchases, touch also plays a factor in a consumers buying tendencies. An experiment using heat and cold pads was conducted around the topic. Customers who held onto a heat pad invested 43% more money into their purchases than those holding a cold pad. This study along with another on scene experiment proved people are more likely to buy the things they touch while shopping.

“I was black friday shopping for six hours with a group of friends and we saw Build-A-Bear was having a buy one get one sale so we went in and I was petting all of them cause they’re all super cute and the little black lab puppy was the fuzziest. It made me so happy and feel like a kid again!” Becca Isler said.