Understanding the Psychology of Scarcity: When Limited Resources Prompt Abstract Thinking

Scarcity is a prevalent condition that characterizes human existence. Mankind has regularly experienced periods of famine and draught (Chakravarthy and Booth 2004), modern economies often must cope with economic recessions (Griskevicius et al. 2013), and even in resource-rich environments people routinely encounter cues that emphasize the limited nature of products and resources (Cialdini 2009; Gitlin 2007). As a consequence, people often think about, worry about, and discuss scarcity-related concerns (Twist and Barker 2006). However, in spite of the frequency of cues and cognitions related to scarcity, our understanding of the psychological processes that result when the concept of scarcity is activated remains limited. In this research, we investigate how activating the concept of scarcity influences the way people process information. Specifically, we posit that scarcity-related cues can affect people’s level of processing through the activation of an abstract mindset (Liberman and Trope 2008). Construal level theory (CLT; Liberman and Trope 1998) posits that psychological distance affects the way in which individuals mentally represent objects or events (Trope and Liberman 2003). More specifically, when events are psychologically distant, people represent them at a higher level, focusing on their superordinate, central, and general features, whereas when events are psychologically proximal, people represent them at a lower level, focusing on their subordinate, peripheral, and concrete features. Research has also shown that unrelated cues can promote these more abstract versus concrete levels of processing (Fujita et al. 2006; Freitas, Gollwitzer, and Trope 2004; Förster, Friedman, and Liberman 2004) and have carry-over effects on decision processes (Khan, Zhu, and Kalra 2011; Kim, Zhang, and Li 2008; Meyvis, Goldsmith, and Dhar 2012).