Showing off your status and wealth makes you seem less co-operative

By Emma Young People who can afford luxury goods tend to buy them, and to show them off.  “This is unsurprising given the myriad social benefits associated with being perceived as well-off and high status,” note the authors of a new study, led by Shalena Srna at the University of Michigan. But in some situations, there might be downsides to conspicuous consumption. After all, as the team writes: “it conveys a boastful self-interest, which is incompatible, in people’s minds, with pro-sociality”. So what happens when — as is so often the case — it’s in our interests to work with others? Given the opportunity, do we show off, and signal high status — or do we choose to be more modest? The team’s findings, reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition, contain some important insights. In an initial online study, the team adopted a version of the widely used Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) game. Participants were told that they’d have to decide whether to co-operate with a partner to do half each of 60 units of work (solving captchas) — or to defect. If both partners chose to defect, they’d have to complete 60 units of work each. If only one did, the co-operator would have to do 90 units, while the defector wouldn’t do any. Before they made their decision, they were shown an avatar that was purportedly made by their partner. They were informed that their partner had chosen the hairstyle, skin t...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Money Social Source Type: blogs