The plastic trap: Self-threat drives credit usage and status consumption
Journal
Social Psychological and Personality Science
Subject
Organisational Behaviour
Publishing details
Authors / Editors
Pettit N C; Sivanathan N
Biographies
Publication Year
2011
Abstract
Conspicuous consumption and its accompanying debt played a critical role in crippling global financial markets in 2008. Although a confluence of factors contribute to hyper-consumerism, the authors explore the potential role of two psychological forces—the desire to combat self-threats through compensatory consumption and the relatively pain-free experience of consuming on credit—that may have interactively contributed to the pernicious cycle of consumption and debt. Consistent with their predictions, the authors find that self-threat sways individuals to consume with credit over cash (Experiment 1) and the interactive effect of self-threat, product status, and payment method creates a perfect storm, whereby threatened individuals not only seek to consume high-status goods but also, when using credit, do so at higher costs to themselves (Experiment 2). These findings have broad implications for consumer decision making and offer psychologically grounded insights into the regulation of lending policies aimed at promoting consumer health.
Keywords
Compensatory consumption; Cash versus credit status; Expenditure; Self-treat; Status
Available on ECCH
No