On College Students' impulsive consumption psychology——the influence of trait power and money priming

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to explore the effects of trait power and money priming on College Students' impulse buying. In both experiments, Sense of Power Scale (SPS) was used to select subjects with high and low trait power to participate in the experiment; in Experiment 1, scrambled-words task was used to activate the concept of money; in Experiment 2, the method of mindset priming was used to activate the amount of money. The results show that: (1) After the concept of money is activated, individuals with low trait power have higher impulse purchase intention than those with high trait power, regardless of whether they are rich or poor; however, there is no significant difference between high and low power groups in no money concept priming group. (2) No matter whether the level of individual's trait power is high or low, compared with the condition of lack of money, individuals have higher impulse purchase intention under the condition of money abundance.