Success enhances taste for luxury goods: study

A sense of success can boost people's desire to buy expensive luxury goods, which they perceive as personal rewards for winning, a study suggests.
While we may sometimes make expensive purchases because of the high quality of a product, these items often represent status symbols, a phenomenon termed 'conspicuous consumption'.
Conspicuous consumption represents a costly display of wealth that serves to increase an individual's social status.
Previous studies have suggested that testosterone plays a key role in human social status seeking, with elevated levels of the hormone being associated with more dominant and aggressive behaviour in men.
It has also been suggested that testosterone levels increase in response to an individual winning a competition, and fall in response to losing.

In a study published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers looked into the effects of social status and testosterone levels on conspicuous consumption.

Yin Wu, former PhD student at the University of Cambridge in the UK, tested the effects of winning or losing a competitive version of the game Tetris on the behaviour and testosterone levels of 166 male volunteers.
The participants thought they were competing against each other in two-player games, but in reality they were randomly assigned as winners or losers.
After playing the Tetris game, the researchers asked the participants how much they would be willing to pay for luxury items such as expensive cars, from 10 per cent of its retail price up to 120 per cent.

They found that winners tended to be willing to pay more for these items than losers.
Next, participants were asked to attribute positive and negative words to the items. Researchers found that winners attach greater value than losers to luxury items.
Finally, the researchers measured the participants' testosterone levels. Contrary to expectations, winning and losing had no observable effect on testosterone levels.
"Winning a competition, which we know is associated with feeling a sense of a higher social status, seems to drive individuals towards conspicuous consumption, making them more willing to pay for luxury items," said Wu, who is now based at Shenzhen University in China.

"However, we were surprised that testosterone levels did not change with winning or losing, and so testosterone does not seem to be driving the effects on conspicuous consumption," said Wu.
The researchers argue that one way in which winning leads to conspicuous consumption is through an enhanced sense of entitlement among winners, the feeling that as winners they are more deserving of preferential treatment than others.
This would be consistent with findings that feelings of superiority over others arising from hard work and success enhance the desire to purchase luxury brands, as individuals see the luxury goods as a reward.