by Bruce Hood
Novelty is one of the motivating factors that keeps consumers seeking new products. We want the latest cool thing because we are bored with what we have and we want something different.29 It is no coincidence that advertisers are at pains to highlight that products are either ‘new’ or ‘improved’ so that you can expect something different. The attention systems in our brain are stimulated by the prospect of some new reward, which creates our wanting and desire. But just like most experiences, our pleasure habituates. Once you acquire whatever it was you wanted, you start looking around for the next best thing in a constant cycle of what’s known as ‘hedonic adaptation’.
Even the most stimulating of experiences can become boring. With repeated intercourse, sexual interest declines in many species, especially among males. However, novelty induces what is called the ‘Coolidge effect’: the reinvigoration of interest and mating capabilities when a novel sexual partner is introduced. It’s one of the reasons why pornography is so popular, because it provides a seemingly endless supply of novel images to satisfy sex drives. The name is attributed to a trip by President Coolidge and his wife to a government farm in the US where Mrs Coolidge observed a rooster mating frequently and was told by the attendant that the cockerel performed this dozens of times a day. Mrs Coolidge is alleged to have said, ‘Tell that to the President when he comes by.’ Later, upon being told of his wife’s remarks, the President asked, ‘Same hen every time?’ The reply was, ‘Oh, no, Mr President, a different hen every time.’ President Coolidge laconically replied, ‘Tell that to Mrs Coolidge.’
CHOOSING THE RIGHT POND
What is true at the neuronal level is true all the way up the network. Every aspect of complex behaviour will adapt. Whenever you experience some sensation such as sight, sound, taste or smell, that experience is always relative. In other words, all judgements are based on comparisons. You experience this every waking moment. Your life is one big exercise in making relative comparisons. Whether you are tired or alert, hungry or famished, bored or interested, happy or sad, it’s all a matter of comparison. And what is true of the basic experiences is true of how we think of ourselves and what we value in life.
Relativity, as noted by the economist Robert H. Frank, is one of the fundamental principles in human economic behaviour. In his book Choosing the Right Pond,30 he makes the point that our economic decisions are guided by status, which is really a relativity issue. It explains why people would prefer to live in a 3,000-sq. ft apartment if their neighbours live in 2,000-sq. ft apartments, rather than in a larger, 4,000-sq. ft apartment in a neighbourhood of 5,000-sq. ft apartments; and why people would prefer to earn just $50,000 if their colleagues earned $25,000 rather than earn $100,000 if colleagues earned $250,000.31 We would prefer to have less so long as it is more than everyone else. We measure our success relative to others. One of the most surprising examples of this comes from an analysis of emotional reactions to winning Olympic medals.32 To even reach the Olympic Games should be considered an extraordinary achievement, and yet analysis has revealed that Olympians can sometimes experience disappointment even when they win a silver medal. The reason that the silver medallists are not happy is because they are comparing themselves to the winners. In contrast, the bronze medallists compare themselves to all the other competitors who did not get a medal, so they perceive themselves better off and happier. Relativity is how we judge our sense of achievement. It is better to be a big fish in a small pond than a big fish in a bigger pond.
Just about everything we do can become a competition with others. From eating to running a race, the mere presence of others makes us up our game in a process known as social facilitation.33 We may consider ourselves fast runners, but that ability really depends on how fast others can run. Like the joke about the two athletes running from the lion in the Serengeti, it is the relative comparison that is the most important measure, not the absolute value, when it comes to thinking about ourselves.
Car ownership is a classic example: many people seek status by the value of the car they drive. Expensive cars are generally more powerful, better made and equipped with all the latest gadgetry, but it is the cost of the car that impresses the most. Drivers are less likely to honk at the car in front at a green light if it is an expensive sportscar compared to an old banger.34 Such luxury items are called ‘positional goods’ because of where they place you on the status ladder; their value is relative rather than absolute. They may be bought as a way of enhancing one’s perceived status but luxury items change people’s perceptions of the owner. This becomes critically important for those who live in social groups where the need to signal status cannot be satisfied with houses, titles and education, but by expensive personal possessions they can carry around with them.
Our susceptibility to status symbols comes from our deep need to be accepted, but it is also a way of protecting ourselves. We depend on each other, which creates a corresponding vulnerability to isolation that affects not only mental well-being but also our physical health. Remarkably, and this is something that has only recently been appreciated, social isolation increases your likelihood of an earlier death by about 30 per cent and presents a stronger morbidity risk factor than either obesity or moderate smoking.35 If we want to be noticed then we need to signal. We need to be valued and appreciated by others, which is one of the reasons conspicuous consumption is such a powerful signal for most of us. We want to impress others because, in doing so, we are securing our position not only within the group, by being placed further up the social ladder, but also by avoiding the lowest rungs where those less fortunate in society run the risk of being ostracized.
Our sensitivity to evaluation with and by others is a fundamental component of our psychology. Humans are constantly comparing themselves, as articulated in the psychologist Leon Festinger’s social comparison theory. As he pointed out in his seminal paper in 1954, there is no objective appraisal of oneself because most measures of human aptitude depend on who we compare ourselves with.36 What is true of personal attributes is also true of ownership. We are always comparing what we have with that of others, but not just anybody. Very few of us think that we are well off in comparison to the Bill Gateses and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world, so we do not generally compare ourselves to them. Nor do we compare ourselves to the multitude of poor living in the slums and shanty towns. Rather, we judge ourselves relative to the neighbours and our colleagues at work as these are our most relevant comparisons. And given our distorted perspective, psychologically, we are constantly in the silver-medal position on the rostrum of life.
Bling Culture
Anyone who has watched hip hop videos cannot fail to notice how there is constant reference to flashy, ostentatious trappings of gold, expensive cars, beautiful people and champagne. These are commonly referred to as ‘bling’. What is remarkable is that even those who cannot afford these luxury goods will still sacrifice in order to acquire desirable designer goods in an attempt to emulate those who have succeeded. In 2007, economists published a study looking at conspicuous consumption and race in the US, and found that African Americans and Latinos spent 25 per cent more of their disposable income on jewellery, cars, personal care and apparel compared to whites in the same economic bracket.37 What might be the cause of this?
Take trainer shoes, a trademark of hip hop style, as a good example. The trainer began life as the ‘sneaker’ in the late nineteenth century as a multipurpose rubber-soled casual shoe designed for activities like playing croquet and beach walks, but the shoes reached the height of popularity in the 1980s when they became associated with famous basketball players. In 1985, Nike introduced the first of the ‘Air Jordan’ range, named after the legendary Chicago Bulls player Michael Jordan, which retail for just over $1,000 for the top model today. Another in the Nike range, the ‘Air Mags’, is currently the most expensive trainer and sells for nearly $9,000.
There have been multiple muggings and murders associated with Nike thefts. Why would anyone sp
end that sort of money, especially if they cannot afford it, on shoes that place their lives at risk? For a start, these shoes have recognized street credibility that makes them highly desirable as status symbols. Secondly, owning luxury goods produces a sense of well-being. Just like Bhisham, our Indian farmer, the poorest derive greater satisfaction from spending on luxury items than wealthier individuals. This is supported by a recent analysis of over 34,000 households in India, which revealed that conspicuous consumption was associated with higher levels of subjective well-being, and the effect was most pronounced in the poorest families.38
There is, however, a racial stereotype that needs to be explained when it comes to the bling culture. Why is it that African Americans and Hispanics in the US, more than whites at comparative income levels, are spending more of their income on non-essential goods? It depends on where they live and comes down to social comparison again. When economists looked at blacks living in more affluent parts of the US, they found there was proportionately less money spent on conspicuous consumption.39 In other words, racial minorities were spending proportionately more on luxury goods because they were living in the poorest neighbourhoods. Why?
When your ethnic group is largely poor, there is pressure to distinguish yourself by conspicuous consumption because the situation is so much more competitive with many more rivals. However, that need to impress disappears if you live in more affluent areas where there is less direct competition from members of the same ethnic group. Blacks and Latinos did not feel the need to compete with their rich white neighbours because they were not the relevant comparison group. But does this pattern hold for other groups, especially those in other countries less affluent than the US where the impact of spending money on conspicuous consumption has greater consequences for disposable income on basic requirements such as health and medical services? Indeed, it does. South African society is characterized by huge differences within and between social groups. Applying the same analysis of relative expenditure within social groups in over 77,000 households between 1995 and 2005 revealed that coloureds and blacks spent between 30 and 50 per cent more on conspicuous consumption goods and services than comparable whites, with the magnitude of the effect more pronounced in the poorest households.40 In these dire situations of poverty, signalling trumps the need to address basic living requirements.
This desire to flaunt possessions can create a vicious circle. Money spent on luxuries is not spent on the sorts of investment that might help to alleviate social inequality such as education. However, that argument underestimates the true extent of the racial inequality in the US. According to an Economic Policy Institute report of 2016, the black–white wage gap has been increasing steadily since 1979.41 A college education does not reduce this gap, since black college-educated males experience the greatest disparity with their white counterparts. To make matters worse, any benefits of economic growth over the decades have gone to the top wage earners – predominantly white males – thereby increasing the disparity that already prevents minorities from prospering.
GREEN-EYED MONSTERS AND TALL POPPIES
Coveting is one of the seven deadly sins, specifically identified as to be avoided in the Bible’s Ten Commandments: ‘You shall not covet your neighbour’s house. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, nor his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, nor anything that belongs to your neighbour.’ Both the Talmud and the Koran also specifically warn about the dangers of wanting what others have. In ancient times, prior to mass production and where everyone knew each other, there were fewer goods to go around and so coveting inevitably led to competition and the desire to acquire at the loss to another.
We covet items, but envy people. However, envy can create the negative emotion of resentment and rumination about another’s perceived advantages. The negativity can be so consuming that people would even prefer to burn their own money in order to reduce the earnings of someone they envy.42 It leads to that peculiar pleasurable experience felt at another’s misfortune that the Germans call schadenfreude. Clearly envy is irrational, contradicts standard economic behaviour and leads to malicious behaviours and thoughts. It creates a distinct register in the emotional circuitry of the human brain active when we are thinking about others.43 We envy because of the relativity principle described above. We envy those that are closest to us and especially if their good fortune is something that could have easily fallen upon us.
But sometimes comparing ourselves to others can spur us on in an aspirational sense. Aristotle first drew a distinction between two forms of envy: malicious envy, where we begrudge the success of others, and benign envy where we admire and wish to emulate the successes of others. This distinction exists in other languages that have separate words to express the difference between positive and negative envy. Whereas English and Italian have only one word for envy, Polish and Dutch have two. In Dutch, there is afgunst (malicious envy) and benijden (benign envy). In both cases of envy, there is a perceived imbalance between what we have compared to others. However, malicious envy is related to schadenfreude, while benign envy is not.44 Moreover, the motivations that imbalance creates lead to different coping strategies. In malicious envy, we prefer to take away the successes of others to redress the imbalance – to pull down. Whereas with benign envy, we prefer to acquire what others have in order to be on an equal footing – to pull up.45 Clearly malicious envy leads to a zero-sum game where no one benefits. In contrast, benign envy can lead to a competitive race that improves the situation for all, as when we up our game. Whereas in the past we were warned about coveting our neighbour’s possessions, as well as about showing off too much, today we seek the benign envy of others. We want others to admire us, but not to begrudge us.
Benign envy is the goal of advertisers who want to motivate consumers to acquire items that inspire them to be like others. Celebrity endorsement is used to stimulate benign envy as we try to emulate those whom we admire. In one study of smartphone purchasers, students were asked to imagine working with a group of fellow students where one member was demonstrating the latest features of the Apple iPhone they had just acquired.46 Participants were told to imagine desiring this phone, as well as being provided with information about the individual who owned it. In one group, the person was described as undeserving, so as to induce a sense of malicious envy, whereas another group were told that the owner was a deserving individual, so as to induce benign envy. A third group were told nothing about the iPhone owner but asked to reflect on the desirability of the phone. Those who experienced benign envy were willing to pay an average of $100 more for the purchase of a similar iPhone, compared to those experiencing malicious envy. However, those experiencing malicious envy were prepared to pay even more for a different phone, the BlackBerry, just to distance themselves from the iPhone owner whom they regarded as undeserving. This finding partly explains the brand tribalism that exists between Apple and non-Apple users and speaks more to the ownership of group identity than objective product evaluation.47
We may be jealous of those brandishing products as tangible measures of their success, but salaries are probably the most contentious issue when it comes to social comparisons. In 2017, the ratio between the average salary for a chief executive working in one of the top UK companies and one of their workers was 130:1. In other words, an ordinary worker earned less than 1 per cent of the top executive’s salary.48 In the US, the discrepancy is even greater. Data from 2014 reveals that the average ratio of CEO salary to worker was 354:1.49 Some of the annual salaries of executives represent a lifetime of wealth for the average worker. According to USA Today, the average CEO salary in 2016 was $11 million per year.50 Is it any wonder that there is such a public appetite to see these fat cats get their comeuppance through some personal misfortune or scandal? The term ‘fat cat’ was coined by journalist Frank Kent of the Baltimore Sun in the 1920s to describe rich political donors who yearned for public honours as recognition. Scandals sell newspapers, not only beca
use they are titillating but because they are a welcome opportunity to feel better about our own lives when someone on a higher rung of the social ladder has a fall from grace. This is why newspapers continue to publish such stories, to trigger feelings of just deserts in their readers.51
Seeking to level those who have risen to an elevated position is called the ‘tall poppy syndrome’. The name comes from the story in Livy about the last king of Rome, Tarquin the Proud, who, when asked about how to maintain power, took a stick and cut off the heads of the tallest poppies in his garden: a metaphor for executing the most eminent citizens. Nowadays, it’s the press, especially in the UK, who conspire to cut people down to size if they get too popular.
The tall poppy syndrome is also well-established down under. Australians are renowned for their self-deprecating humour and this comes from a reluctance to brag too loudly about achievement to avoid jealousy. Australians even refer to successful people as ‘tall poppies’, and cutting them down to size is known as ‘tall-poppying’. When she appeared on a US chat show with Seth Meyers in 2017, the rising Australian TV actress Ruby Rose rebuked the host when he described her as ‘famous’, saying: ‘I’ll get in so much trouble if you say that … They don’t like hearing that back home … You’re going to get me slaughtered.’52 Fear of malicious envy is why many successful individuals engage self-deprecating strategies to ward off potential criticism. Or they may display generosity towards others they think will become envious. Traditionally, when a Polynesian fisherman caught fish and others did not, he would give away all his catch. If he did not, the others would talk negatively about him back in the village.