Does retail therapy work?
It might not be possible to buy happiness, but you can buy relief from low mood. That's according to an investigation of retail therapy bySelin AtalayandMargaret Meloy. Through three separate studies the pair concluded that retail therapy generally works, that people deploy the practice strategically, rather than impulsively, and that there are few if any negative emotional side-effects.
But before you head off for a quick spending spree, note the caveats: the study relied on US participants, mostly university students; measures of mood were self-report; and there was deviation into a study of chocolate consumption, as opposed to actual buying behaviour.
The investigation kicked off at a US shopping mall, with nearly two hundred shoppers surveyed on their way in and way out. This confirmed that people use retail therapy as a mood enhancer. Those participants who reported being in a bad mood on their way into the mall were more likely to admit on their way out to having made an unplanned self-indulgent purchase.
For a second study, dozens of students thought they were taking part in a taste test to do with developing new ice-cream flavours, for which they had the opportunity to sample a number of chocolate snack bars. Half these participants had been primed earlier with a short passage of text that said impulsive people are far less creative than more restrained folk. These same participants also completed an earlier word search task that included restraint-related words like "careful". All this was intended to set them a goal of wanting to be restrained.