The Benefits of Retail Therapy: Making Purchase Decisions Reduces Residual Sadness

People often shop when feeling sad, but whether and why shopping reduces residual (lingering) sadness remains an open question. Sadness is strongly associated with a sense that situational forces control the outcomes in one’s life, and thus we theorized that the choices inherent in shopping may restore personal control over one’s environment and reduce residual sadness. Three experiments provided support for our hypothesis. Making shopping choices helped to alleviate sadness whether they were hypothetical (Experiment 1) or real (Experiment 2). In addition, all experiments found support for the underlying mechanism of personal control restoration. Notably, the benefits of restored personal control over one’s environment do not generalize to anger (Experiments 2 and 3), because anger is associated with a sense that other people (rather than situational forces) are likely to cause negative outcomes, and these appraisals are not ameliorated by restoring personal control over one’s environment.

[1]  D. Keltner,et al.  Resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia is associated with tonic positive emotionality. , 2009, Emotion.

[2]  Michel Tuan Pham,et al.  Informational Properties of Anxiety and Sadness, and Displaced Coping , 2006 .

[3]  Panagiotis G. Ipeirotis,et al.  Running Experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk , 2010, Judgment and Decision Making.

[4]  Meryl P. Gardner,et al.  Effects of Impulse Purchases on Consumers' Affective States , 1988 .

[5]  Chen-Bo Zhong,et al.  Do Green Products Make Us Better People? , 2009, Psychological science.

[6]  Craig A. Smith,et al.  Patterns of cognitive appraisal in emotion. , 1985, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[7]  Ronald J. Faber,et al.  Compulsive Buying: A Phenomenological Exploration , 1989 .

[8]  P. Tetlock,et al.  Rage and reason: the psychology of the intuitive prosecutor , 1999 .

[9]  Self-Interest Without Selfishness , 2012, Psychological science.

[10]  Deborah A. Small,et al.  Heart Strings and Purse Strings , 2004, Psychological science.

[11]  Nitika Garg,et al.  Sadness and consumption , 2013 .

[12]  Simona Botti,et al.  Power and Choice , 2011, Psychological science.

[13]  David Gal,et al.  Grapes of Wrath: The Angry Effects of Self Control , 2011 .

[14]  John J. B. Allen,et al.  The handbook of emotion elicitation and assessment , 2007 .

[15]  J. Gross,et al.  Emotion elicitation using films , 1995 .

[16]  Timothy D. Wilson,et al.  Loss Aversion Is an Affective Forecasting Error , 2006, Psychological science.

[17]  J. Lerner,et al.  Feelings and Consumer Decision Making: The Appraisal-Tendency Framework , 2007 .

[18]  M. Zanna,et al.  Establishing a causal chain: why experiments are often more effective than mediational analyses in examining psychological processes. , 2005, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[19]  J. Willett,et al.  DEMONSTRATING THE RELIABILITY THE DIFFERENCE SCORE IN THE MEASUREMENT OF CHANGE , 1983 .

[20]  Derek D. Rucker,et al.  Bracing for the Psychological Storm: Proactive versus Reactive Compensatory Consumption , 2012 .

[21]  Margaret G. Meloy,et al.  Retail therapy: A strategic effort to improve mood , 2011 .

[22]  Ronald J. Faber,et al.  In the mood to buy: Differences in the mood states experienced by compulsive buyers and other consumers , 1996 .

[23]  J. Lerner,et al.  Fear, anger, and risk. , 2001, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[24]  B. Wansink,et al.  The Influence of Incidental Affect on Consumers’ Food Intake , 2007 .

[25]  Miguel A. Vadillo,et al.  Illusion of Control , 2013, Experimental psychology.

[26]  J. Lerner,et al.  Misery Is Not Miserly , 2008, Psychological science.

[27]  Kennon M. Sheldon,et al.  Of Wealth and Death: Materialism, Mortality Salience, and Consumption Behavior , 2000, Psychological science.

[28]  D. Gilbert,et al.  Focalism: a source of durability bias in affective forecasting. , 2000, Journal of personality and social psychology.