With continued inflation and interest rate increases, spending money this holiday season could be a source of stress for many in the U.S.
However, new research indicates that a little personal splurge might be just what people need to combat stress.
A MoneyGeek survey of over 2,000 adult respondents found that 50% expected this holiday season to be more financially stressful than last year’s, and 55% of parents anticipated having a more stressful financial situation. Additionally, 65% of those stressed about their holiday finances were also concerned about the state of their mental health.
According to a study published last month in the Journal of Consumer Research, “one potential solution to the pervasive feeling of constraint is self-gifting, which is the process of invoking a hedonic consumption experience with the... intention of boosting one’s emotional well-being.”
When strained finances are part of the reason for stress, buying unnecessary items may not seem to be the best solution. In fact, the research found that people who feel tense for any reason are actually less likely to reward themselves with gifts.
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“The unfortunate paradox though, is that this way of thinking is counterproductive to wellness,” said Jacqueline Rifkin, assistant professor at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell’s SC Johnson College of Business and lead author of the study. “It’s when we’re feeling the most crunched that individuals can actually benefit most from self-gifting.”
Rifkin and co-authors Kelley Gullo Wight, assistant professor of marketing at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, and Keisha M. Cutright, associate professor at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, started the study in 2018. They conducted online and in-person behavioral experiments over the course of multiple years.
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“For example,” Rifkin said, “if you were offered an opportunity to get a massage during a particularly busy time of year, would you do it? We find probably not, because you figure you’d be too stressed out and distracted, and wouldn’t actually be able to relax.”
When participants felt more stressed they were less interested in products with self-gift descriptions. Most said that they wouldn’t be able to enjoy the product or service.
“Rifkin and her colleagues became especially curious if this line of thinking was right, or if people were accidentally undercutting their own happiness,” said Cornell. “They followed up with studies where people engaged in self-gifting experiences – attempting to create the special moment – to see how it affected their happiness.”
Once they engaged in self-gifting, stressed people actually became happier and more relaxed.
“It was pretty interesting to have a project that carried over from before the pandemic to during, since we had to move all our experimental paradigms online, and also adapt to the fact that people completely changed how they were thinking about self-gifting, self-care and their resources,” Rifkin said.
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