![]() |
Photo via Good Free Photos |
It’s that
time of year again, when the approach of Christmas becomes undeniable. Stores transform themselves to remind us, and advertising everywhere instils a sense
of urgency about gift shopping.
Not
everyone responds to this in the same way. Are you the kind of person who starts
haemorrhaging money in the run-up to Christmas? Do you have interesting new
ideas when you’re thinking of gifts for others, or do you purchase whatever’s
popular? What drives individual differences in holiday spending patterns?
This last
question has received little attention in psychological literature and is at
the core of new research from Sara J. Weston and colleagues at Northwestern
University and Joe Gladstone at University College London, published in Social Psychological and Personality Science.
Their focus is on associations between the Big Five personality traits (Openness
to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism)
and Christmas spending.
Christmas
shopping, the authors note, has several features that distinguish it from other
consumer activities, and increase the possibility that some personality traits
might be associated with more spending. Do you make lists of family members and
friends months beforehand, and carefully think of presents in advance? The
authors suggest that Christmas shopping favours those who like to make a plan
and stick to it, which may require higher levels of conscientiousness. The
researchers also expected people with bigger social networks to show a
substantial increase in spending at Christmas relative to their own spending
and that of others, and therefore predicted that extroversion would be of
particular interest in their analysis.
Over 2000 participants
using a money management app in the United Kingdom completed a survey and
allowed researchers access to transaction information. A baseline spending pattern
was established for each participant from months before the holiday season, so
that spending after November 1 could be distinguished as Christmas spending.
Income, age and gender were controlled for, and a short, 10-item personality
measure was used.
After researchers
controlled for these demographic variables, only two of the Big Five
characteristics were meaningfully associated with high Christmas spending – not
high levels of extroversion, as they had expected, but low levels of
neuroticism and openness to experience. The authors speculate that those who
are more open to experience are less likely to follow social rules, making them
less inclined to give gifts, and those who are more relaxed are ‘untethered’ in
their spending.
Some limitations
of the study include a lack of nuance in the measures used: spending was not
broken down sufficiently to allow a detailed understanding of what was really gift-related
Christmas shopping. Consider, for example, that November and December are
colder months, and there may be any number of additional influences on spending
at this time of year. How personality interacts with any of these influences could
be of interest, so more differentiated information about spending would be
useful in future research. Similarly, the short measure of personality used
only contained two items per trait, and traits had mixed levels of reliability.
While it is
clear that more detailed information is needed to make firm conclusions, in the
meantime, it is might be helpful for those who feel that they lack imagination
to talk more to their anxious and more creative friends if they’re at all
concerned about spending too much – and retailers now have an evidence-based
inkling of what personality types are most likely to open their wallets. Perhaps it's not surprising that in the busy months it's the calm folk who go out spending?
For the
SPSP press release, click here.
For the
original article, click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment