Americans receive more than $743 billion in refunds from returned retail purchases—more than double the $335 billion they get in tax refunds. So what happens to all this money? Do customers spend it as they ordinarily would, cash being fungible and all? Or does something a little … different happen?

This week we’ll discuss what consumers (and marketers) should know about the psychology of retail returns. Plus: Does your company have a culture of “performative busyness”? If so, what can you do about it?

Spending money the second time around

Kellogg’s Ata Jami wanted to understand how customers conceived of refunds. After all, “rationally speaking” we should spend refunds much as we would spend any other money we have lying around.

But Jami believed people might spend refunded money differently from other funds, in part because he had noticed himself treating refunds differently. Indeed, Jami found that, across a series of studies, participants spent refunded money more easily and on more luxurious, unplanned items.

For example, in an initial study, participants were instructed to imagine they had $100 to spend on pants at a clothing store and had found the perfect-fitting pair. Some were told they had just returned items worth that much at the store, while others were told the money would come from their wallet. All were to imagine that on their way to the register they saw a shirt they really liked. Those who believed they were spending refunded money were 28 percent more likely to make an unplanned purchase than those who would need to reach for their wallet. In another, similar study Jami found that spending refunded money instead of out-of-pocket money pushed people toward more luxurious items over utilitarian ones.

And the finding even extended to real-world purchases. In one study, participants using refunded money spent 53 percent more on snacks than those who’d been given cash directly.

Jami attributes the effect to a phenomenon called “pain of paying,” which is lower when people are using money they’ve already spent. “People usually don’t experience the pain twice for the same money because they don’t consider it an additional deduction from their wallet,” says Jami, especially when time has passed since the original purchase.

This means that retailers would be wise to entice customers with new offers shortly after doling out a refund—while customers would be wise to take heed!

Read more about this research in Kellogg Insight.

I’m so busy, oh so busy

Do you work for one of those organizations? You know, the ones where people seem to just work all the time—not because something critical has to get done, but just for the sake of working? Kellogg’s Adam Waytz calls this a “culture of busyness.” And in addition to being, well, not productive, these cultures can also lead to burnout. This puts the onus on leaders to make a change.

“The only way to change those cultures of busyness is through deliberate steps to say ‘we don’t want you to be busy or working all the time,’” he tells Fast Company. “One of the ways to reverse it is for leaders to model behavior that it’s okay to take some time for yourself, or putting policies in place that actually force people off the clock.”

You can read more from Waytz in Fast Company.