Spending Sadly: How Time versus Money Impacts Enhanced Valuations Under Sadness

Under the ‘misery-is-not-miserly’ effect, consumers’ incidental sadness influences their motivation to value goods and services. In particular, feelings of sadness (relative to happiness or neutral emotions) produce more positive valuations, leading to higher purchase intentions (Cryder et al. 2008, Lerner, Small and Loewenstein 2004). We contend that payment currency (time vs. money) may influence the degree to which sadness triggers greater valuations of targets. Consumers spend time, money, or both on goods and services, and thinking about spending with these currencies produces differences in motivation and involvement. Consumers perceive themselves to be more connected to targets on which they have spent time versus money (Mogilner and Aaker 2009). Money is depersonalized; even subtle reminders of money arouse feelings of detachment (Vohs, Mead and Goode 2006, 2008). Thus, currency of payment may affect how consumers react to incidental emotions when valuing goods and services. In past work, the misery-is-not-miserly effect has obtained mainly when consumers are self-focused (Cryder et al. 2008). Our investigation focuses on situations in which consumers are self-focused during the induction of an emotional state. Specifically, we employ autobiographical mood induction (i.e., writing about a life event; Schwarz and Clore 1983) to increase self-focus along with activating incidental emotion. We argue that contemplating payment itself could mitigate the misery-is-not-miserly effect if situational self-focus no longer persists. Specifically, we predict that the misery-is-not-miserly effect will be minimized when the payment under consideration forges a weaker connection between the self and the target.