Feeling Guilty About Money: How Consumers Prioritize Cleansing Tainted Money Over Redeeming Themselves From Moral Failures

Consumers can feel guilty about money, for instance, when they receive a product refund by stretching the truth or obtain a pay raise by exaggerating their contribution to a project. Given that consumers feel guilty about money, does this affect how they spend that money? Since feeling guilty about money signals a problem in one’s moral standing, it should thus encourage spending the money in ways that restore this threatened morality (Baumeister, Stillwell, and Heatherton 1994; Keltner and Gross 1999; Izard 2010). But exactly how do people counter the threat to their moral standing exemplified by the guilt-tainted money? One possible response is to engage in moral balancing (Nisan 1991)—people who feel guilty about money can restore their moral standing by participating in various kinds of pro-social activities, such as donating the money or volunteering time. A second possibility relies on a more generalized model of moral compensation. Rather than engaging in pro-social activities, the guilt may simply encourage people to engage in activities that improve their own welfare (e.g., investing in their health or education). This prediction is based on a perspective that views moral system to be interconnected with other domains of self, consequently allowing improvements in one domain to compensate for shortcomings in another domain (Monin and Jordan 2009; Steele 1988).