At Their Best When No One Is Watching: Decision Context Moderates the Effect of Envy on the Tendency Toward Self-Improvement

Abstract

Consumer behavior often varies as a function of social context (public vs. private). This occurs in part because decisions that are made in public (vs. private) reflect self-presentational concerns, due to the fact that they have the potential to confer reputational costs and/or benefits. However, no research to date has examined if this widely acknowledged phenomenon might be affected by consumers’ emotions at the time of the decision. The current article addresses this by examining if incidental envy moderates the effect of social context on subsequent, unrelated self-bolstering behaviors. Across three studies, we find that although public (vs. private) social contexts generally promote self-bolstering behaviors (e.g., effort exertion, conspicuous consumption and charitable giving), this effect is attenuated among consumers who experience incidental envy prior to the decision task. We suggest that this pattern of results occurs because the potential reputational costs of self-bolstering behavior are more salient to those experiencing incidental envy, and discuss this process explanation. We conclude with a discussion of the practical and theoretical implications of this work.