본 연구는 수치심이라는 자의식적 감정이 소비 맥락에서 어떻게 발현되는가를 탐구하는 데 그 목적이 있다. 수치심을 경험한 개인은 사회적인 자아 정체성이 위협받고 손상되는 듯한 기분을 느끼게 되며 자신을 위축되게 지각하는 경향을 보인다. 따라서 수치심이 유발되면 일시적으로 사회적 자아존중감이 낮아지게 되는데, 이렇게 작아진 사회적 자아를 회복하는 대체적인 자기 방어적 행위이자 더 나은 자아로 변모하기 위한 수단으로써 과시적인 소비가 이루어질 것이라고 가설을 세우고 연구를 진행하였다. 연구 1에서는 기질적인 수준의 수치심 경향성이 과시적 소비를 유발하는 데 있어 정적인 영향력을 발휘한다는 것을 보인 한편, 이들의 관계를 자아 변화 기대가 유의미하게 매개한다는 것을 밝혔다. 또한 기질적인 수준의 수치심에서 한 걸음 나아가 조작으로 점화된 수치심이 과시적 소비에 미치는 영향력을 살펴봄으로써 인과 관계를 검증하기 위해 연구 2를 진행하였다. 그 결과 경로 분석을 통해 수치심이 과시적 소비에 미치는 간접 효과의 통계적 유의성을 검증하였다. 구체적으로는, 수치심으로 인해 유발된 사회적 자아존중감의 저하가 소비에 대한 자아 변화 기대를 증폭시킴으로써 과시적인 소비가 발생하게 된다는 것을 밝혔다. 일반적으로 특정 감정으로 인해 발생하는 행동적인 경향은 소비 맥락에서도 동일한 방향으로 나타나지만, 이와 달리 본 연구에서는 수치심이 갖는 독특한 특성에 주목하여 자신을 숨기거나 사회적인 상호작용으로부터 멀어지려는 수치심의 일반적인 행동적 특성과는 정반대의 양상, 즉 자신을 드러내고자 하는 욕구가 소비 맥락에서 발생할 수 있음을 보였다는 데 그 의의가 있다.
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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