The Sweet Escape: Effects of Mortality Salience on Consumption Quantities for High- and Low-Self-Esteem Consumers

Naomi Mandel and Dirk Smeesters

Journal of Consumer Research: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, 2008, vol. 35, issue 2, pages 309-323

Abstract: This research demonstrates that exposure to death-related stimuli can increase consumers' amounts of purchasing and consumption. We demonstrate that consumers who have been recently reminded of their own impending mortality wish to purchase higher quantities of food products (and actually eat higher quantities) than do their control counterparts. This effect occurs primarily among low-self-esteem consumers. We explain our findings in terms of escape from self-awareness. Low (but not high) self-esteem participants overconsume in response to a mortality salience activation as a means to escape from self-awareness. We also address alternative explanations for these effects. (c) 2008 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

Date: 2008
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/587626 link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jconrs:v:35:y:2008:i:2:p:309-323

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JCR/order1.html

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Consumer Research: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly is edited by Dawn Iacobucci

More articles in Journal of Consumer Research: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly from University of Chicago Press
Address: The University of Chicago Press, Journals Division, P.O. Box 37005 Chicago, IL 60637
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().