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ISSN : 1229-8778
Previous research showed that when people feel a sense of shame, they tend to seek a complementary ego-protective remedy to repair their threatened self-concept. The goal of this study is to identify behavioral tendencies of ashamed people in a consumption context. We hypothesized that shame induces conspicuous consumption in order to restore threatened social self. With the results of study 1, we found initial evidence that trait shame can positively predict conspicuous consumption. Additionally, results for the study 2 revealed that the participants who recalled a shameful experience showed significantly lower level of social state self-esteem, higher level of self transformation expectations, and thus tended to have more willingness to be engaged in conspicuous consumption than control groups. Preacher and Hayes' (2004) bootstrapping mediation analysis confirmed that shame had indirect effects on conspicuous consumption. Implications, limitations, and suggestions for the future researches are discussed.
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