Let Us Eat and Drink, for Tomorrow We Shall Die: Effects of Mortality Salience and Self-Esteem on Self-Regulation in Consumer Choice

We examine how making mortality salient affects consumer choices. We develop a new theoretical framework predicting when consumer behaviors will be more (less) indulgent when mortality is salient, arguing that individuals focus more of their limited self-regulatory resources on domains that are important sources of self-esteem and less on domains that are not important sources. In two domains, food choice and charitable donations/socially conscious consumer behaviors, high mortality salience led to less indulgent choices among participants for whom that domain was an important source of esteem and more indulgent choices for participants for whom the domain was not an important esteem source. (c) 2005 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

[1]  J. Arndt,et al.  Death Can Be Good for Your Health: Fitness Intentions as a Proximal and Distal Defense Against Mortality Salience , 2003 .

[2]  J. Greenberg,et al.  Terror Management Theory of Self-Esteem and Cultural Worldviews: Empirical Assessments and Conceptual Refinements , 1997 .

[3]  Paul Rozin,et al.  Food and life, pleasure and worry, among American college students: gender differences and regional similarities. , 2003, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[4]  John W. Payne,et al.  Does Elaboration Increase or Decrease the Effectiveness of Negatively versus Positively Framed Messages , 2004 .

[5]  J. Greenberg,et al.  The body as a source of self-esteem: the effect of mortality salience on identification with one's body, interest in sex, and appearance monitoring. , 2000, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[6]  R. Baumeister,et al.  Emotional distress regulation takes precedence over impulse control: if you feel bad, do it! , 2001, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[7]  Kennon M. Sheldon,et al.  The Urge to Splurge: A Terror Management Account of Materialism and Consumer Behavior , 2004 .

[8]  Samuel Cohen.  It's the End of the World as We Know It , 2005 .

[9]  C. Burris,et al.  "It's the end of the world as we know it": threat and the spatial-symbolic self. , 2004, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[10]  J. Crocker,et al.  The costly pursuit of self-esteem. , 2004, Psychological bulletin.

[11]  Brian Wansink,et al.  Exploring comfort food preferences across age and gender , 2003, Physiology & Behavior.

[12]  Cynthia Barnhart,et al.  Consumption Self-Control by Rationing Purchase Quantities of Virtue and Vice , 1998 .

[13]  J. Crocker,et al.  Contingencies of Self-Worth , 2005, Psychological review.

[14]  O T Ben-Ari,et al.  The impact of mortality salience on reckless driving: a test of terror management mechanisms. , 1999, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[15]  R. Baumeister,et al.  Self-regulation and depletion of limited resources: does self-control resemble a muscle? , 2000, Psychological bulletin.

[16]  J. Greenberg,et al.  Suppression, accessibility of death-related thoughts, and cultural worldview defense: exploring the psychodynamics of terror management. , 1997, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[17]  Tom Pyszczynski,et al.  Psychological Defense in Anticipation of Anxiety , 2003, Psychological science.

[18]  S. Turell,et al.  Desirable and undesirable masculine and feminine traits in relation to students' dieting tendencies and body image dissatisfaction , 1983 .

[19]  Jeff Schimel,et al.  Why do people need self-esteem? A theoretical and empirical review. , 2004, Psychological bulletin.

[20]  S. Shields,et al.  The Body Esteem Scale: multidimensional structure and sex differences in a college population. , 1984, Journal of personality assessment.

[21]  Alison Cook,et al.  Mortality salience and the spreading activation of worldview-relevant constructs: exploring the cognitive architecture of terror management. , 2002, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[22]  S. Heine,et al.  Terror Management and Marketing: He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins , 1999 .

[23]  J. Polivy,et al.  Self-esteem, restraint, and eating behavior. , 1988, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[24]  D. Watson,et al.  Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: the PANAS scales. , 1988, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[25]  M. Hetherington,et al.  "Chocolate Addiction": a Preliminary Study of its Description and its Relationship to Problem Eating , 1993, Appetite.

[26]  A. Ward,et al.  Don't mind if I do: disinhibited eating under cognitive load. , 2000, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[27]  B. Shiv,et al.  Heart and Mind in Conflict: The Interplay of Affect and Cognition in Consumer Decision Making , 1999 .

[28]  Do You Look to the Future or Focus on Today? The Impact of Life Experience on Intertemporal Decisions , 2007 .

[29]  J. Crocker,et al.  Contingencies of self-worth in college students: theory and measurement. , 2003, Journal of personality and social psychology.