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More than likely, the answer is yes. The reason, research shows, is that money can act like a drug on our brains. Just the ritual of counting your money, says University of Minnesota

marketing professor Kathleen Vohs, can raise your pain threshold. In one experiment she and her colleagues took two groups of students and had one count bills; the other, blank pieces of

paper. Then both groups stuck their fingers in hot water. The students who counted real money reported feeling significantly less discomfort. Vohs's study, published in the journal 

_Psychological Science _in 2009, is part of a field called behavioral economics, which explores how money plays tricks with our heads. Turns out, it happens a lot. The mind's financial

guidance systems can go haywire when we order at a restaurant, when we sell our homes, or when we try to save for retirement. "I'm sure every time I go to the supermarket, in small

ways I'm fooled," says William Poundstone, who writes about behavioral economics in his new book, _Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It)._ When we

don't have a feel for what something should cost, our brains flail about for a reference point. The old expression goes that you can't compare apples and oranges, but we're

actually fine at this. "You never see anyone baffled by the fruit plate," says Duke University behavioral economics professor Dan Ariely, who wrote _Predictably Irrational: The

Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. _"What is difficult is to compare an apple and 50 cents, or $1.20." Companies exploit these brain-scrambling effects to get us to buy things

we don't need. The good news: If you see them coming, you can use the same tricks to save money — and make money. Be aware of the following five traps: SEE ALSO: THE HIGH COST OF

'FREE' TRIALS THE TRICK: A HIGH PRICE MAKES A LOWER PRICE SEEM REASONABLE, EVEN IF IT ISN'T. You sit down to eat at a restaurant. The most expensive steak on the menu costs

$50. But there's another one for $25. "Ah," you think. "Just right." Deciding on the $25 steak feels rational. You weighed the options; you made your choice. But

your selection was swayed by the mere existence of the $50 steak. Economists call this effect anchoring. That $50 steak anchors our expectations of what a steak could cost. By comparison, a

$25 steak looks cheap. Anchoring is rampant on wine lists, says Richard Thaler, an economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and co  author of_Nudge: Improving

Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness_. "Suppose the most expensive bottle on the list is $100 and nobody wants to buy it," he says. To boost sales, the restaurant adds a

$200 bottle. "They could keep just one of them around. Nobody will order it." Eric Johnson, codirector of the Center for Decision Sciences at Columbia University, has done

experiments with actual bottles of wine. Students are told a random number, then asked to put a price on the bottle. The students who were told higher numbers — even though they know this

number has nothing to do with the wine — picked higher prices. "It is really quite shocking," Johnson says. "The more you do this, the more you realize we are really imperfect

decision makers." THE FIX: Shaking an anchor is difficult. Put a number in our heads and it tends to stick. Even telling people to ignore it rarely helps. "It's like saying,

' Don't think about an elephant,' " says Poundstone. "You can't do it." One solution: Establish personal anchors in your mind, says Duke's Ariely.

Pick something and set its value. Maybe $25 is the price of a theater ticket. Before ordering a $25 wine, ask yourself if it's worth a show. If you're eating out, stick to the

menu's more affordable neighborhoods. Self-described "menu engineer" Gregg Rapp, who has advised major restaurant chains, recommends finding deals at the bottom or the back of

the menu, where cheaper items tend to hide. And if you're wondering whether a menu has been "engineered," see if it uses dollar signs — they make us think about money.

"I've been taking dollar signs off menus for 29 years," Rapp says. THE TRICK: OUR FEAR OF LOSING MAKES US PASS UP WINNING MOVES