Social foundations of emotions in family consumption decision making

Abstract

Although emotions are believed to be socially constructed and important features of family life they are little understood in the context of families making consumption decisions. Our research focuses on understanding individual and social aspects of emotions, including whether parents mirror each other's emotions during family consumption decisions. Our Social Relations Model analyses provide evidence consistent with hypotheses that anger and frustration in family consumption decision making are interdependent, and incorporate individual and relationship levels, bidirectionality, and reciprocity. Additionally we find that the mirroring of these emotions between the parents is pervasive, occurring across spending, model/make, and final decisions involved in buying a new car. Our theory and findings provide insights into how families share emotions during consumption decision making and provide a foundation for future investigations on discrete emotions, emotion mirroring and contagion, and family decision making.