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In this groundbreaking 2008 book Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, Danish brand consultant Martin Lindstrom showed how neurology, as much as economics, drives consumer behavior. One of TIME's 100 Most Influential People in the World, Lindstrom talks to TIME's Sean Gregory, during a business trip in Thailand, about what's buzzing around our brains in this recession.

There have been some signs, though fleeting, of a possible economic rebound. What's the consumer thinking right now?
What is fundamentally different about the recession, except for the ones we had in the 1930s, is that we're putting bookmarks in our brains. When icons that we defined as stable, like Lehman Brothers, fall apart, you are suddenly questioning everything around you. So consumers now, if things start to get better, will not run into the stores and start consuming like there had never been a recession. That will not happen. At the end of the day, consumers will want something practical that will enhance their lives in concrete ways. And that's really a fundamental change from the past, right? (See pictures of malls of America.)

So what exactly is happening in the consumer brain?
Consider the experience of a good friend of mine, who has always been afraid of escalators. I was always peeved with him for it. Whenever we were shopping, he was always taking the staircase. I asked why he was afraid of the escalator. He couldn't explain it. Then one day, his mother told me that when he was 5 years old, a little girl was on the escalator just in front of him. She had bare feet, and no socks on. And her feet got mangled. It was such a dramatic experience that he never forgot it, at least in his nonconscious part of the brain. In his conscious part of the brain, he totally forgot about it. But whenever he saw an escalator, an alarm system was basically saying, "Don't touch that."

That's really a survival mechanism we have as human beings. And we may even not at a conscious level be able to explain why we're cutting back. We're just doing it. You will just do it by intuition. And if you start to save money by intuition, you will never ever question it again.

So what else is hot in consumer psychology right now?
Companies will start to play a mind game with consumers that is slightly different from what we've seen in the past. Some companies assume that the consumer doesn't have any money. But now they're learning that that's not the case. Consumers still do have money — at least many do — but the reason that they're not spending it is because they're afraid they may lose the money in the future.

So companies are trying to find the triggers they have to pull on in order to make people feel comfortable about spending money. The best example of that was Hyundai, which said you can return your car within a year if you lose your job and get a refund. That's a major change you will see in marketing. And then you will see companies start to build the very functional, practical dimensions of their brands. If you take Louis Vuitton as an example, they will say, "In the future, when you buy a Louis Vuitton bag, it's not just the most fashionable bag on the market, it also has a two-in-one dimension so you can turn it inside out, and it's red today and black tomorrow. You can use the bag both in the evening and the morning, and you don't have to buy a bag for four years because it has two color dimensions to it."

Also, companies will start to talk about the past rather than the future. We're seeing that happening a lot with brands now. They're saying, "Hey, if you talk about the past, people feel safe." For instance, I went on a summer holiday, and it was a disastrous holiday. The weather was crap, the food was bad and the hotel was bad. But when you look at the photos from that holiday two years later, you kind of forget all the bad memories you had. That's exactly what's happening in our minds. Companies will start to push the past more than the future, because we feel kind of warm and soft for the past, and trust the past a lot more. Because brands are all about trust, they're going to push that dimension a lot more.

That's exactly what Louis Vuitton is doing. Take any of the latest Louis Vuitton ads they're running right now: they're actually promoting various actors who are not hot anymore. They're putting them in settings which are from the '60s, the '50s, and basically you feel you are buying the past.

See how Americans are spending now.

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What else can brands do combat this recession?
They can play off something I call instant justification. When the buyer from the family goes out and buys this Louis Vuitton bag, it's actually hard to remove the guilt factor when she's in the store. She now has to come home and justify to her husband why she bought this during a recession. And when you look at the curve of guilt, the biggest spike is maybe seconds after you bought that bag, because the only thing you are thinking about is how to justify the purchase. So what brands are doing now is basically filling a prepackaged justification argument. With women, brands now are basically saying there's one side which is the emotional side, that is, "I love it, I can't live without it, I'll look sexy and popular and whatever." On the other side, they are providing rational arguments to hand over to the husband when they come home. When the husband sees this bag and says, "What the heck are you thinking about?" she will immediately start this argument, saying "Well, I'm not going to buy another bag for four years." Now that's not going to be the truth. But that's what the woman believes in that moment.

If you turn this around, it's exactly the same thing happening with the husband. Around 60% of all car purchases today are decided by the woman in the family. And when a neighbor asks the husband why he bought the car, he cannot say, "My wife loved the pink interior design in my car." That's basically saying, "I'm totally controlled by the woman at home." So what he's going to say is, "Did you know this window can close at 82 m.p.h.? It's the fastest-closing window in the world." And the neighbor will say, "That's kind of cool." Well, it has nothing to do with the functionality of the car, but that's a rational argument he will make. The car company is phrasing it in his mind so he can justify the purchase. (See 10 things to buy during the recession.)

If I'm a consumer who doesn't want to fall into temptation, but I see all these deals out there, what kind of mind games can I play to stop myself from spending money I really need?
Number one: don't bring your credit card out to the mall. When you buy something with cash, it feels like it's much more expensive. And because of that, you actually start to say to yourself, "Hey, is this really worth it?" That's trick number one. Trick number two is related to dopamine and addiction. Take a distance to things. If you go out and you want to buy the bag, the golden rule should be to say, "Hey, I really want that bag, but I'm not going to buy it today, I'm going to wait one day and if I really love it so much I'll come back and buy it." Now we do know from our research studies that 60% of consumers will not buy the car or the bag the day after, simply because the dopamine is falling down to a level where you can't justify going back to the store.

The third element is pretty simple too. If you have a family, leave your kids at home when you shop. We know today that people spend 40% more in a supermarket when their kids are with them. The psychology is very interesting. When the recession is running at its peak, the last group in the world you as a parent want to penalize is the kids. You will say to yourself, "I'm in a recession right now, I can cope with it, that's fine, but my kids should never suffer for me." When you finally go out in the supermarket, you as a parent are much more likely to give in, and basically say "You can buy" because you feel guilty. Kids are very aware of this. I'm in Thailand here, just doing some sessions here today with kids, and the argument Thai kids are using is exactly the same as American kids', as Japanese kids'. They are really playing on the guilt to make sure they can make the parents buy more. They know what buttons to press.

What areas of the brain are you looking at for more insight about how consumers think?
I find it incredibly sad, but let me explain my whole theory of the amygdala. The amygdala is the part of the brain partly responsible for fear. During the recession fear is really growing to immensely higher levels. Advertising in the United States will start to push the fear button. Amygdala activation will grow more in the future, and we will see more and more brands which appeal to the fear factor. They say, "Use my product and if you don't use it, some bad stuff will happen." That's one trend I find scary.

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See a discussion on the future of capitalism.

• Sean Gregory
• Marketing expert Martin Lindstrom scans consumer brains for a living. Here's what he's finding. Hint: keep the kiddies out of the mall