Protecting the self through consumption: Status goods as affirmational commodities

Individuals conspicuously consume to signal their wealth. As a variant to this economic explanation, four studies explored individual’s psychological need for self-integrity as a potential motivating force for these consumption decisions. Relying on both field and experimental studies, and employing multiple instantiations of high-status goods and self-threat, we demonstrate that individuals consume status-infused products for their reparative effects on the ego. Individuals under self-threat sought ownership of high-status goods to nurse their psychological wounds (Study 1), and when afforded an alternate route to repair their self-integrity, sought these products less (Study 2). Furthermore, among a representative sample of US consumers, low-income individuals’ lowered self-esteem drove their willingness to spend on high-status goods (Study 3). Finally, these high-status goods serve the purpose of shielding an individual’s ego from future self-threats (Study 4). The compensatory role of high-status goods has important implications for consumer decision-making and public policies aimed at reducing consumer debt.     

The relationship between individual differences in spontaneous self-affirmation and affect associated with self-weighing

We investigate whether the tendency to self-affirm in response to threat is associated with how people feel when they weigh themselves. People who were preoccupied with their weight anticipated feeling less negative (Studies 1a and 1b) and felt less negative (Study 2) when self-weighing if they typically affirmed their strengths. Study 3 experimentally manipulated self-affirmation. Although this intervention prompted affirmation of strengths it did not influence how participants felt when they subsequently weighed themselves. Together, the findings suggest that the tendency to spontaneously affirm strengths, but not values or social relations, is associated with the psychological outcomes of self-weighing and thus provide the basis for understanding how such individual differences might moderate how people respond in other self-evaluative contexts.