Mortality reminders increase desire for high-status luxury goods.
Evidence
The researchers who conducted this experiment found that after the people in the study thought about death, it didn’t change their opinion of Pringles or the Chevy. But they were much more interested in owning a high-status, self-esteem-boosting Lexus or Rolex. Other studies have shown that people who view death most negatively are most attracted to high-status material possessions, especially if they have shaky self-esteem. And after thinking about their mortality, people estimated that they would make more money in the future and spend more of it on luxuries like clothing and entertainment. Death reminders also spurred those with low self-esteem to plan more extravagant parties. Thoughts of death led people in Poland to overestimate the physical size of coins and paper money; and Poles asked merely to count monetary notes rather than pieces of blank paper of the same size reported a reduced fear of death. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 455
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the book’s core terror management theory developed in earlier chapters, and to consumer-behavior research on status spending around death anniversaries.
- CANDY: The Poland finding that counting money (vs. blank paper) reduces death fear is a quirky, tweetable nugget.
Related
- Luxury consumption boosts self-esteem, a defense against death anxiety. (similarity 0.83)
- Subtle death reminders drive worldview defense, self-esteem striving, and unhealthy behavior. (similarity 0.82)
- Adults respond to death reminders with mundane distraction and consumption (similarity 0.81)
- Death-terror drives art, religion, war, consumerism, and fame-seeking (similarity 0.80)
- Death reminders more than triple willingness to buy strong alcohol. (similarity 0.79)