Investing in the real me: Preference for experiential to material purchases driven by the motivation to search for true self-knowledge

How social media sharing drives consumption intention: the role of social media envy and social comparison orientation

BACKGROUND

Social media benign envy, an upward comparison-based and painful emotions associated with the motivation to improve oneself, has attracted increasing attention from researchers due to its ubiquitous and significant impact on social network users' intentions and behavior. However, the results of previous studies on whether material or experiential consumption is more likely to cause social media envy (treated as a single construct) have been inconsistent, and there is a lack of research on what triggers social media users to experience more intense benign envy and thus inspiring their consumption intentions. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the type and luxuriousness of shared consumption and viewer's social comparison orientation jointly affect social media users' consumption intentions through benign envy.

METHODS

A 2 (type of consumption sharing: experiential vs. material) × 2 (luxuriousness of consumption sharing: luxury vs. non-luxury) × 2 (social comparison orientation: high vs. low) mixed-design experiment was conducted to test theoretical model with data from 544 undergraduates in China. SPSS 26.0 and the Process macro were used to test the model.

RESULTS

The results revealed that luxury experiential consumption information shared on social media triggered more benign envy compared with other types of shared consumption information. When social media users shared non-luxury consumption, experiential consumption was more likely to inspire benign envy among users with high social comparison orientation than material consumption. However, when luxury consumption was shared, benign envy acted as a mediator between purchase type and participants' purchase intention regardless of whether participants' social comparison orientation was high or low.

CONCLUSION

This study revealed that whether and how social comparison orientation of social media users who read the shared content influences the mechanism by which the type of consumption sharing on social media affects social media users' consumption intentions through benign envy as a mediator is dependent on the luxuriousness of the shared consumption. The findings not only provide new insights for researchers to better understand social media envy and the underlying psychological mechanism for social media readers' consumption intention, but also have practical implications for practitioners.

Authentic for Thee But Not for Me: Perceived Authenticity in Self-Control Conflicts

Is self-control authentic? Across several hypothetical scenarios, participants perceived impulsive actions as more authentic for others (Study 1a) but self-control as more authentic for themselves (Study 1b). Study 2 partially replicated this asymmetry. Study 3 accounted for behavior positivity because self-control was typically the more positive action in the previous studies. Study 4 minimized the influence of positivity by framing the same behaviors as either impulsive or controlled; impulsive actions were deemed more authentic than self-control, but only for other people. An internal meta-analysis controlling for behavior positivity revealed that (a) more positive behaviors are more authentic, and (b) impulsive actions are more authentic than self-controlled actions, especially for others. This actor-observer asymmetry suggests that, even in the face of a strong tendency to perceive positive actions as authentic, there exists a competing tendency to view others' impulsive actions as more authentic than self-control.

Experiential purchases and feeling autonomous: Their implications for gratitude and ease of justification

In four studies, we tested the influence of type of purchase on autonomy support and the relationships between autonomy support, gratitude, and ease of justification. In each of the three studies, participants were randomly assigned to either the experiential purchase condition or the material purchase condition. In our fourth and last study, participants were assigned to an either autonomy supportive purchase condition or ordinary purchase condition. Results from study 1 showed a positive direct influence of experiential purchases on autonomy support and a direct and indirect significant relationship with gratitude. Results from study 2 with a sample of older consumers showed a positive influence of experiential purchases on autonomy support and a direct and indirect positive relationship with gratitude. In study 3, consumers who brought to mind an expensive experiential purchase reported higher autonomy support than participants who brought to mind an expensive material purchase and this experimental effect had an indirect positive relationship with gratitude and ease of justification. Last, consumers who brought to mind a purchase that truly reflected who they were reported higher levels of autonomy support than consumers who reported an ordinary purchase and this elicited autonomy had a positive relationship with gratitude. The implications of the results were discussed.

Sketching the Contours of State Authenticity

We outline a program of research in which we examined state authenticity, the sense of being one’s true self. In particular, we describe its phenomenology (what it feels like to be experience authenticity), its correlates (e.g., emotions, needs), its nomological network (e.g., real-ideal self overlap, public and private self-consciousness), its cultural parameters (Easter and Western culture), its precursors or determinants (congruency, positivity, and hedonism), and its psychological health implications. We conclude by arguing that state authenticity deserves its own conceptual status, distinct from trait authenticity, and by setting an agenda for future research.

State Authenticity

State authenticity is the sense that one is currently in alignment with one’s true or real self. We discuss state authenticity as seen by independent raters, describe its phenomenology, outline its triggers, consider its well-being and behavioral implications, and sketch out a cross-disciplinary research agenda.