Misery Is Not Miserly

What a fascinating piece of research this is: Misery Is Not Miserly: Why Even Momentary Sadness Increases Spending. It first of all throws into question some of the marketing tactics about associating goods and brands with happy, warm and comfortable imagery and connotative meanings of contentment etc. Though it does fit with the marketing ploy of trying to engender a sense of discontent and the link to the research in this case would relate to this hypothesis arising from the findings.

"Why might a combination of sadness and self-focus lead people to spend more money? First, sadness and self-focus cause one to devalue both one’s sense of self and one’s current possessions. Second, this devaluation increases a person’s willingness to pay more for new material goods, presumably to enhance sense of self. Notably, the “misery is not miserly” effect may be even more dramatic in real life, as the low-intensity sadness evoked in the experiment likely underestimates the power of intense sadness on spending behavior. The effect could extend to domains beyond purchasing decisions, causing people to engage in increased stock trading, for example, or even to seek new relationships-- without conscious awareness that they are being driven by their emotions."

For me this needs to feed into my thinking about culture-jamming liturgy and how we worship against a consumerist cultural backdrop. The importance of liturgy that enables us to regain a sense of God's love, of contentment with God's provision and of recognising before God our state and being able in confession to recognise our decisions and motivations become clearer in the light of this research.