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Psychological Science
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DOI: 10.1177/0956797611429579
2012 23: 517 originally published online 16 March 2012Psychological Science
Monika A. Bauer, James E. B. Wilkie, Jung K. Kim and Galen V. Bodenhausen
Cuing Consumerism : Situational Materialism Undermines Personal and Social Well-Being
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Psychological Science
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DOI: 10.1177/0956797611429579
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Materialism can be defined as a value system that is preoccu-
pied with possessions and the social image they project.
Veblen (1899) argued that for many people, social status is
defined by possessions, and that this definition produces an
endless drive to acquire ever more impressive belongings.
Attempting to derive a sense of self-worth from materialistic
pursuits appears, however, to be a dubious proposition. Indeed,
a wide variety of correlational studies indicates that individu-
als who score higher in materialism evince lower levels of
mental and physical well-being (for reviews, see Burroughs &
Rindfleisch, 2002; Kasser, 2002). For example, Kasser and
Ryan (1993, 1996) found that more materialistic individuals
showed lower levels of psychological adjustment and social
functioning. More materialistic values also predict higher lev-
els of anxiety and unhappiness (Kasser & Ahuvia, 2002) and
are associated with lower-quality social relationships (Kasser
& Ryan, 1993, 2001).
Although this literature has produced rich insights, its
correlational nature raises two issues worth further consider-
ation. First, there is the matter of causality; it could be the case
that materialism is a consequence of personal dysfunction,
rather than vice versa. For example, attachment to possessions
could arise as a compensation strategy among individuals with
social-affiliation deficits (Clark et al., 2011; Lastovicka &
Sirianni, 2011). Experimental evidence would help to bolster
the case that materialism undermines well-being. Second, the
individual differences perspective on materialism could be
usefully augmented by research investigating situational fac-
tors that can activate materialistic thinking. It may be that
many individuals, in the right circumstances, will adopt a
materialistic mind-set, possibly to their personal or social det-
riment. Experiments manipulating potential situational trig-
gers of materialistic mind-sets are needed to explore these
possibilities.
Culturally omnipresent consumer cues are obvious candi-
dates for serving as triggers of situational materialism. Con-
sider advertising. Although estimates of the average number
of daily exposures to advertisements vary greatly, one of the
most widely accepted estimates is 245 daily exposures (accord-
ing to the Advertising Media Internet Community, 1997).
Contemplating the desirable goods in advertisements may be a
Corresponding Author:
Galen V. Bodenhausen, Department of Psychology, Northwestern
University, 2029 Sheridan Rd., Evanston, IL 60208
E-mail: galen@northwestern.edu
Cuing Consumerism: Situational
Materialism Undermines Personal and
Social Well-Being
Monika A. Bauer, James E. B. Wilkie, Jung K. Kim,
and Galen V. Bodenhausen
Northwestern University
Abstract
Correlational evidence indicates that materialistic individuals experience relatively low levels of well-being. Across four
experiments, we found that situational cuing can also trigger materialistic mind-sets, with similarly negative personal and
social consequences. Merely viewing desirable consumer goods resulted in increases in materialistic concerns and led
to heightened negative affect and reduced social involvement (Experiment 1). Framing a computer task as a “Consumer
Reaction Study” led to a stronger automatic bias toward values reflecting self-enhancement, compared with framing the
same task as a “Citizen Reaction Study” (Experiment 2). Consumer cues also increased competitiveness (Experiment 3)
and selfishness in a water-conservation dilemma (Experiment 4). Thus, the costs of materialism are not localized only in
particularly materialistic people, but can also be found in individuals who happen to be exposed to environmental cues that
activate consumerism—cues that are commonplace in contemporary society.
Keywords
consumerism, materialism, situationism, social engagement, well-being, personal values
Received 7/15/11; Revision accepted 10/20/11
Research Article
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518 Bauer et al.
common route to the activation of materialistic mind-sets.
Another common media practice is using the term consumers
to refer generically to the public (as opposed to using other
potential generic terms, such as Americans or citizens). A
news story about American income-tax rates, for example,
might focus on the impact of contemplated tax hikes on “con-
sumers.” By framing the news in terms of its relevance to a
consumer identity, these messages may directly activate a con-
sumption mind-set in the audience. In the studies that follow,
we developed experimental manipulations analogous to these
features of everyday life situations to investigate whether such
manipulations would situationally activate materialistic think-
ing and the unsavory social and psychological consequences
with which dispositional materialism has previously been
associated.
The possibility that materialistic mind-sets could have an
immediate adverse impact on well-being is suggested by
research showing that when particular values are situationally
activated, an ensemble of corresponding values are likely to be
co-activated, while incompatible values are inhibited (Maio,
Pakizeh, Cheung, & Rees, 2009). Building on evidence that
values can be classified into 10 broad categories that are
related to one another in a circumplex structure (Schwartz,
1992), Maio et al. found that activating values in one portion
of the circumplex resulted in collateral activation of neighbor-
ing values, but inhibited values on the opposite side of the cir-
cumplex. Materialism should activate values in Schwartz’s
self-enhancement quadrant, which focuses on wealth, achieve-
ment, power, and status; at the same time, it should deactivate
values in the self-transcendence category, which prioritize
concerns about other people. Feelings of dissatisfaction may
arise from this pattern for at least two reasons. First, as Veblen
(1899) argued, activation of materialistic thinking is likely to
elicit a vicious cycle in which one feels continuously dissatis-
fied relative to individuals who own more (Ordapayeva &
Chandon, 2011). Second, if materialism deactivates social
engagement, it could undermine momentary feelings of
belonging that have proven to be of central importance to
well-being (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Helliwell & Putnam,
2004).
Experiment 1
Our first experiment examined whether common indicators of
impaired well-being previously shown to be related to disposi-
tional materialism—namely, negative affect and low social
engagement—would be susceptible to influence by situation-
ally induced materialism. A pilot study was conducted to
determine whether presenting depictions of luxury goods can
activate materialistic strivings. Specifically, 47 undergradu-
ates were randomly assigned to view a series of either 24
images of luxury goods (e.g., electronics, jewelry, cars, cloth-
ing) or 24 images of natural scenes devoid of consumer
products, and to rate their pleasantness. Then, as part of an
ostensibly unrelated study, participants completed a series of
questionnaire items (using 9-point response scales) that
included portions of the Aspiration Index (Grouzet et al.,
2005) that are commonly used to assess materialistic concerns
(i.e., the Money, Social Image, and Popularity subscales). As
shown in Table 1, the pilot study confirmed that exposure to
desirable consumer goods increased materialistic aspirations.
In Experiment 1, we sought to determine whether these same
images could undermine mood and social engagement.
Method
Participants. Fifty undergraduates (28 female, 22 male; mean
age = 18.84 years) participated as part of a requirement for
their introductory psychology course.
Procedure and materials. Participants were seated in private
cubicles. They were told that, prior to the main study, they
would be asked to rate the pleasantness of visual stimuli that
were being considered for possible use in research on visual
perception. Participants were randomly assigned to view the
same 24 images of luxury consumer goods used in the pilot
study (consumer-cue condition) or 24 images categorized as
neutral in valence in the International Affective Picture Sys-
tem (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 2008; control condition).
Thus, the images in the consumer-cue condition were rated
more pleasant than those in the control condition, but given
our prediction of greater negative affect in the consumer-cue
condition, this difference in stimulus pleasantness worked
against obtaining support for our hypothesis.
The “main study” consisted of questionnaires that included
items from the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS;
Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) and a measure of preference
for social involvement. The PANAS items required participants
to rate the extent to which they were feeling a series of emo-
tional states at the present moment, on a scale from 1 (very
slightly) to 5 (extremely). Nine items, including sad and happy
(reverse-scored), assessed depressed affect (α = .84); seven
items, including nervous and distressed, assessed anxiety (α =
.90); and three items, including guilty and ashamed, assessed
self-dissatisfaction (α = .67). Preference for social involvement
was measured by asking participants to indicate what percent-
age of their free time they would like to allocate to various activ-
ities. The list included social activities (e.g., participating in a
student group, going to parties) and nonsocial ones (e.g., read-
ing, watching television); we summed the percentages allocated
to the social activities to create an overall index of desire for
social involvement.
Results and discussion
Participants in the consumer-cue condition reported signifi-
cantly higher levels of depressed affect and anxious affect
(and marginally greater self-dissatisfaction) than participants
in the control condition (see Table 1). In addition, they
expressed significantly lower preferences for social activities
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Cuing Consumerism 519
(see Table 1). Thus, situational exposure to stimuli that elicit
materialistic mind-sets was indeed associated with the same
indicators of lower well-being seen in studies of dispositional
materialism.
Experiment 2
Our second experiment was designed to expand the prior find-
ings in two ways. First, we investigated a different situational
cue to materialism by employing a task-framing manipulation
analogous to the media’s consumer-framing of the daily news.
Specifically, we framed the experiment as a study of “consumer
reactions” (or, in a control condition, “citizen reactions”). Sec-
ond, we went beyond self-report measures to see whether mate-
rialistic mind-sets can also influence automatic reactions. We
used the Evaluative Movement Assessment (EMA; Brendl,
Markman, & Messner, 2005) to measure automatic evaluative
impulses toward various personal values, particularly values
that are central to materialism. To gauge automatic evaluative
impulses, the EMA takes advantage of the tendency to approach
positive stimuli and avoid negative stimuli. We examined
whether participants’ automatic evaluative reactions to terms
signaling materialistic values (i.e., words related to social status,
success, wealth, etc.) would become more positive after expo-
sure to a consumer cue. On an exploratory basis, we also mea-
sured participants’ reactions to several other types of values.
Method
Participants. Fifty-eight undergraduates (37 female, 21 male;
mean age = 19.7 years) participated, receiving $12 for the
completion of two unrelated studies; the present study always
came first.
Procedure and materials. Participants completed the ex-
periment at individual computer stations. The experimental
manipulation was conveyed by the initial task instructions, to
which participants were randomly assigned. In the consumer-
cue condition, the heading for the instructions was “Consumer
Reaction Study,” and the stated purpose of the study was to see
“how well consumers can rapidly categorize objects.” At the
end of the instructions, participants were asked to confirm
their eligibility for the study by checking a box indicating that
they were “an American consumer.” In the control condition,
everything was the same except that the word “consumer” was
always replaced with “citizen.”
Table 1. Effects of Consumer Cues on Participants’ Responses in Experiments 1 Through 4
Consumer-cue
condition Control condition Comparison of conditions
Experiment and dependent
measure M SD M SD t p d
Pilot study
Materialistic aspirations 5.07 1.07 4.23 1.05 t(45) = 2.70 .01 0.74
Experiment 1
Depressed affect 2.65 0.73 2.29 0.53 t(48) = 2.00 .05 0.55
Anxious affect 2.02 0.90 1.41 0.46 t(48) = 2.98 .004 0.78
Dissatisfaction with self 1.82 0.87 1.42 0.62 t(48) = 1.89 .065 0.51
Hours allocated to social
activities (%)
31 7 38 12 t(43) = –2.38 .02 0.70
Experiment 2
EMA: self-enhancement score 94.28 125.09 18.19 123.90 t(56) = 2.33 .02 0.59
Experiment 3
Competitiveness 4.79 1.08 4.20 1.26 t(64) = 2.04 .05 0.49
High-investment socializing 3.46 0.68 3.77 0.56 t(64) = –2.05 .04 0.48
Low-investment socializing 4.42 0.40 4.14 0.74 t(64) = 1.99 .05 0.47
Experiment 4
Feelings of responsibility 5.21 1.51 5.87 1.26 t(76) = –2.12 .04 0.47
Feelings of obligation 5.44 1.39 5.82 1.25 t(76) = –1.28 .20 0.29
Trust in other people 4.08 1.56 5.33 1.30 t(76) = –3.86 .001 0.80
Viewing other people
as partners
4.69 1.42 5.49 1.47 t(76) = –2.43 .02 0.53
Believing other people should
use less water
3.56 1.77 3.13 1.64 t(76) = 1.13 .26 0.25
Note: Variation in the degrees of freedom in Experiment 1 is due to missing data for one measure. EMA = Evaluative Move-
ment Assessment (Brendl, M arkman, & Messner, 2005).
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520 Bauer et al.
After being oriented to the task in one of these ways, par-
ticipants were asked to complete the EMA procedure. They
were first given a list of the task stimuli, which fell into three
focal categories: positive emotion words (e.g., happy), nega-
tive emotion words (e.g., sad), and non-emotion words.
Although not described as such to the participants, the words
in the latter category reflected a variety of social values.
Of primary interest were words reflecting self-enhancement
values (i.e., wealth, image, success, power, competitive). We
also included words relating to conservative self-restraint
(i.e., moderation, discipline, obedience, frugal, humble), to
self-transcendence (i.e., honest, equality, helpful), and to
self-indulgence (i.e., pleasure, enjoyment, indulgence, thrill).
Participants were allowed to study the list until they under-
stood which stimuli belonged to each of the three focal
categories.
To begin the EMA task, participants typed their name into
a box. Then, they completed a simple categorization task that
consisted of five blocks of trials. On each trial, participants
saw their own name alongside one of the experimental stimuli
(i.e., a positive emotion word, a negative emotion word, or a
value-relevant word). Whether the stimulus appeared to the
left or to the right of the participant’s own name was deter-
mined randomly. Participants were asked to move the stimulus
word toward their name if it was a positive emotion word, and
to move the word away from their name if it was a negative
emotion word; they did so by pushing the left button on a
response pad to move the stimulus to the left, and the right
button to move it to the right. Instructions regarding the value-
relevant words varied by trial block.
In the first block, value-relevant words were not presented.
In the second block, participants were instructed to move
value-relevant words away from their name. Following the
standard procedure (Brendl et al., 2005), we provided error
feedback after anticipation responses (less than 100 ms fol-
lowing stimulus onset), late responses (more than 3,000 ms
after stimulus onset), and responses in the wrong direction.
Having familiarized themselves with the procedure for mov-
ing value-relevant words away from their name, participants
completed the third block of trials using the same instructions.
In the fourth block, participants were told to use a new rule
regarding the value-relevant words, which should instead be
moved toward their name. After practicing this response pat-
tern in the fourth block, they completed the fifth, and final,
block using these new instructions. Within each block, presen-
tation order of the word stimuli was randomized, with the con-
straint that each stimulus appeared three times. Thus, in the
critical blocks, participants responded to each of the value
words three times (i.e., they moved each word away from their
name three times in Block 3 and toward their name three times
in Block 5). To the extent that participants had a positive eval-
uative impulse toward a given value term, response times for
moving it toward their name should have been shorter than
response times for moving it away from their name (see Brendl
et al., 2005).
Results and discussion
After excluding trials on which participants responded incor-
rectly, we determined each participant’s mean response time
for each item, separately for each movement direction (toward
vs. away from name), and an EMA score was computed by
subtracting the mean of the “toward” response times from the
mean of the “away” response times. The larger the difference
score, the more positive the evaluative impulse toward that
stimulus. We then computed average scores for each of the
four types of value items (self-enhancement, self-restraint,
self-transcendence, and self-indulgence). These scores were
analyzed as a function of the task-framing manipulation.
Although there were no significant or marginal effects
involving the exploratory value categories, the critical, focal
category of self-enhancement values showed the expected
effect (see Table 1). Specifically, participants were faster to
“approach” words reflecting materialistic values, such as
wealth, image, and success, when the categorization task was
framed as dealing with consumer reactions, compared with
when the same task was framed as dealing with citizen reac-
tions. Thus, situationally activated consumer cues can reorient
automatic response tendencies, bringing them into greater
alignment with materialistic concerns.
Experiment 3
In Veblen’s (1899) influential analysis of materialism, the
human tendency toward acquisitiveness and conspicuous con-
sumption reflects a competitive jockeying for social status
(e.g., Ordapayeva & Chandon, 2011). Critiques of consumer
economies have emphasized their tendency to engender com-
petitive rather than cooperative social orientations (Kasser,
Cohn, Kanner, & Ryan, 2007). In our third experiment, we
directly examined the effects of consumer cues on feelings of
interpersonal competitiveness. In addition, we utilized a dif-
ferent manipulation of consumer cues. This time, we relied on
a common experimental procedure for priming mind-sets: the
scrambled-sentences task (e.g., Srull & Wyer, 1979).
Method
Participants. Sixty-six undergraduates (42 female, 24 male;
mean age = 19.0 years) participated as part of a requirement
for their introductory psychology course.
Procedure and materials. Participants were asked to com-
plete several experimental tasks on a computer in a private
cubicle. The first one was presented as a study of “cognitive
aspects of linguistic processing.” In reality, this was the prim-
ing task. Participants were given 30 word strings, each consist-
ing of five words. For each string, they had to select and order
four of the words to form a valid English sentence. For partici-
pants randomly assigned to the consumer-cue condition, 20
of these word strings (67%) contained a word related to
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Cuing Consumerism 521
materialistic concepts (e.g., buy, status, asset, expensive). In
the control condition, highly similar word sets were created
except that, in each instance, materialistic concepts were
replaced with mundane, nonmaterialistic ones (e.g., replacing
the word expensive with the word accurate).
Next, participants completed an ostensibly unrelated sur-
vey study that included, among filler items, a three-item mea-
sure of competitiveness and the desire to outdo other people
that was adapted from the Contingencies of Self-Worth Scale
(Crocker, Luhtanen, Cooper, & Bouvrette, 2003). Participants
indicated their agreement with each statement (e.g., “Doing
better than others gives me a sense of self-respect”) on a scale
from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). To further
explore the implications of materialistic mind-sets for social
engagement, we also asked participants to rate their interest in
pursuing a variety of social activities over the coming months,
on a scale from 1 (not interested) to 5 (very interested). These
included five high-investment activities (e.g., joining a student
organization, volunteering for a good cause) and four low-
investment activities (e.g., watching a movie on television
with friends, having dinner with friends). We expected that the
negative effects of consumer cues on social engagement would
be especially pronounced in the case of the high-investment
activities, which involve cooperative (rather than competitive)
social structures. For low-investment forms of social engage-
ment that do not require a particularly cooperative orientation
or a concern for the common good, we expected the effects of
consumer cues to be minimal.
Results and discussion
The measure of competitiveness showed good reliability (α =
.81) and was influenced by the experimental manipulation in
the expected manner (see Table 1); that is, participants in the
consumer-cue condition reported a stronger desire to outdo
other people than participants in the control condition did. In
addition, situational activation of a materialistic mind-set
resulted in significantly lower motivation for high-investment
forms of social engagement. Unexpectedly, the consumer cues
also elicited significantly higher motivation for low-investment
forms of social engagement (see Table 1). This latter finding
may reflect the fact that situational materialists are not devoid
of social needs; being uninterested in more intensive, coopera-
tive forms of engagement with other people, they may instead
opt for cheap-and-easy ways to satisfy their need to connect. It
may also be that situational materialists appreciated the low-
investment, entertainment-related activities listed in our sur-
vey more for their hedonistic value than for their social value
per se.
Experiment 4
Our final experiment further explored the social ramifications
of situational materialism. To the extent that materialism
reflects a competitive orientation toward other people, it is
likely to be associated with selfish rather than cooperative
behavior in social dilemmas. Indeed, past research has shown
that dispositional materialists (who value money, fame, and
other extrinsic rewards) are likely to take more from a limited
common resource pool than individuals who value intrinsic
rewards such as intimacy and self-acceptance (Sheldon &
McGregor, 2000). In Experiment 4, we examined the ability of
situational consumer cues to evoke similar antisocial reac-
tions. We used a consumer-framing manipulation to investi-
gate this issue.
Participants imagined themselves facing a water shortage
that required restraint in their daily water use. They did so with
the water crisis framed as affecting either various anonymous
individuals or local consumers. Because “consumers” could
potentially be regarded as a generic identity that is shared with
other people (much as “Americans” could be a common generic
identity), one might expect this framing to result in more proso-
cial behavior in a social dilemma. Indeed, prior research has
shown that people involved in a social dilemma tend to show
greater cooperative restraint in using a common resource if they
feel that they have a common identity than if they are not united
by some kind of shared identity (e.g., Kramer, 2011; Kramer &
Brewer, 1984). However, we hypothesized that the competitive
feelings associated with consumer identities would preclude the
formation of feelings of trust and common cause that are other-
wise associated with shared identities; instead, we expected to
see greater selfishness and mistrust among “consumers” than
among “individuals” facing a resource dilemma.
Method
Participants. Seventy-seven individuals (43 female, 34 male;
mean age = 32.0 years) were recruited from Amazon.com’s
Mechanical Turk Web site. They received $0.25 in compensa-
tion for their responses to a brief online survey.
Procedure and materials. Participants were directed to an
online survey that they completed on their own computers.
They were asked to read and respond to a scenario involving a
resource dilemma. Specifically, they read about a water crisis
affecting a set of four different individuals who access the
same well for their water. Respondents were asked to put
themselves in the place of one of these individuals (“A”). In
the consumer-framing condition, all of the references to the
persons involved in the crisis used the term consumers, and the
specific individuals were referred to as Consumer A, Con-
sumer B, and so forth. In the control condition, the term indi-
viduals was used instead (e.g., Individual A, Individual B,
etc.) to refer to the parties involved. The description of the
crisis indicated that, because of a drought, the local water sup-
ply was threatened, and the usual demand could not be met.
Participants were then given information about past usage lev-
els of the shared resource, which revealed that Consumer A/
Individual A (i.e., the person they were role-playing) had been
using more water than the others.
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522 Bauer et al.
After reading the scenario, participants provided a number
of ratings on 7-point scales (1 = not at all, 7 = very much).
Specifically, they rated (a) how responsible they felt for deal-
ing with the crisis, (b) how obligated they felt to cut their water
usage, (c) how much they trusted the other parties involved to
use less water, (d) how much they viewed the others as part-
ners, and (e) how much they believed that the others should
use less water than they themselves did.
Results and discussion
As expected, the consumer framing resulted in lower feelings
of personal responsibility for dealing with the resource
dilemma, markedly lower trust in the other parties, and a sig-
nificantly lower tendency to view the others as partners in fac-
ing the dilemma (see Table 1). There were no significant
effects on participants’ feelings of obligation or belief that the
other parties should use less water than they themselves did.
Unlike responsibility (which is a self-transcendence value
related to benevolence), feelings of obligation involve confor-
mity values, and as such, they are not directly in conflict with
self-enhancement concerns the way that self-transcendence
values are (see Maio et al., 2009). However, in general, it is
clear that the consumer identity did not unite—it divided.
Thinking like a consumer again seemed to work against posi-
tive, cooperative engagement with other people.
General Discussion
These experiments consistently document the adverse, causal
effects of materialistic thinking on personal and social well-
being. With its focus on extrinsic signifiers of value, the mate-
rialistic mind-set orients the individual to competitive concerns
about relative standing, producing corresponding feelings of
anxiety and dissatisfaction, and disinclination to trust other
people and engage with them in deep, collaborative ways.
These results augment the rich literature on dispositional
materialism by documenting the existence of situationally
driven forms of materialism. The kinds of cues that triggered
situational materialism in these experiments are highly analo-
gous to features of everyday life that are extremely common-
place in contemporary postindustrial societies. Advertising,
which depicts an endless parade of desirable commodities, is
highly similar to the pictorial primes we used as consumer
cues in Experiment 1 (and the pilot study). Framing informa-
tion in terms of its relevance to consumers (rather than, e.g.,
citizens), as is very common in media discourse, is analogous
to the framing manipulations we employed in Experiments 2
and 4. Although we did not explore how long lasting the
effects of exposure to consumer cues might be, the ubiquity of
these sorts of triggering conditions in everyday life suggests
that even if the effect of any given cue is not particularly
enduring, it probably is not long until another one comes along
to reignite materialistic concerns and their negative implica-
tions for affect and social engagement.
The present findings are related to earlier findings (Vohs,
Mead, & Goode, 2006) that reminders of money orient people
to independence and therefore lead them to prefer greater dis-
tance from others and to be less helpful toward them. Vohs
et al. argued that “money brings about a self-sufficiency orien-
tation in which people prefer to be free of dependency and
dependents” (p. 1154). Here, we showed that a variety of con-
sumer cues can have a broad range of psychological conse-
quences that include not only lower preferences for social
contact, but also negative affect, competitiveness, mistrust,
and diminished feelings of personal responsibility, as well as
automatic activation of self-enhancement values. Although the
concept of money is tightly connected to consumer mind-sets
and luxury goods, it will be an interesting issue for future
research to examine whether money is functionally inter-
changeable with other kinds of consumer cues. We have
argued that consumer cues exert their effects through the
activation of self-enhancement values, rather than via a self-
sufficiency orientation per se. Future studies should examine
whether money primes and other consumer primes can pro-
duce psychologically distinct consequences.
An impressive array of research has connected the most pro-
found kinds of psychological well-being to intrinsic forms of
motivation (e.g., Ryan & Deci, 2000), yet it seems that contem-
porary cultures have come to emphasize extrinsic motivation at
every turn. Our findings corroborate the view that individuals
and societies pay a high price for adopting a ubiquitously con-
sumerist orientation that may undermine social cohesion. After
all, it is by investing in efforts to connect with and benefit their
communities that individuals often find personal happiness,
health, and life satisfaction (Helliwell & Putnam, 2004).
Acknowledgments
This ar ticle discusses research conducted by Monika A. Bauer
for her doctoral dissertation, under the direction of Galen V.
Bodenhausen.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with
respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.
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