Success and selecting luxurious options have been linked by Wu and his team. They report that “Conspicuous consumption refers to the phenomenon where individuals purchase goods for signaling social status, rather than for its inherent functional value…Winning a [social] competition increased…preferences for higher-status vs. lower-status products.” All participants in the study by Wu and colleagues were male and an example of conspicuous consumption is buying an expensive sports car. Participants winning social competitions were victorious playing the game Tetris. Decision makers at organizations planning new offices, for example, are likely to be influenced in the same way by their social successes as people playing Tetris.
Yin Wu, Christoph Eisenegger, Niro Sivanathan, Molly Crockett, and Luke Clark. 2017. “The Role of Social Status and Testosterone in Human Conspicuous Consumption.” Scientific Reports, vol. 7, article 11803.
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.