Scarcity Psychology: Must We Compete for the Good Things in Life?

When I was teaching, I sometimes asked my students: Are the good things in life scarce?

Based on those conversations, I can report that people tended to say they are. As the students saw it, there are only so many spots in a first-year class, rooms in the dorm, and chairs in the lunchroom. Only some people will get A’s and B’s and ultimately graduate “with honors.” Getting into, and through, graduate school only exacerbates these challenges.

Warming to the task, some argued that social life offers similar conditions. Two people interested romantically in the same boy or girl confront the fact that only one—or perhaps neither—will be successful. Losers, to put it coldly, must step back, give up, or plot their next moves. Getting into the Greek organization of one’s choice was no different. Only some would be asked to join; others must explore options.

Few felt that life would change after college. There would be competition for good jobs. Housing, at least of the better sort, would be expensive and in short supply. “Moving up” in one’s career would be problematic, especially since organizations no longer reciprocate the loyalty of their employees.

More philosophically, other students questioned the meaning of “good things.” Surely, they claimed, the best things in life—that is, our experiences of the world—aren’t limited. At any rate, they aren’t of the zero-sum variety, where the desired entity is conceived as a pie. In that metaphor, a bigger slice for one person means a smaller slice for another, or perhaps no slice at all. By contrast, think of the experiences we have in the presence of a beautiful sunset, a wonderful musician, and a great work of art. Does my appreciating these things diminish them for you? Is my life made unhappy because you have a beautiful child, a supportive spouse, or a pleasant weekend at the beach? Pointedly, knowledge, values, relationships, and experiences are not the same as material possessions.

Note also that our visions of the world are socially and culturally framed. The United States, as all the students acknowledged, is a hyper-competitive society. Perhaps we are trained to see scarcity, even when it doesn’t exist. Maybe we fail to imagine other possibilities of living because of those blinders.

The scarcity mentality

Long, long ago, my mother and her gal pals used to joke: “Boys are like streetcars. You miss one; another will be along in 15 minutes.” Whether or not those young women really believed their boast, that view is the opposite of the scarcity mentality.

Psychologists focus on scarcity as a perception that what we want is in short supply or otherwise difficult to obtain. Because we cannot easily obtain the “good” in question, that quest preoccupies us. The object denied to us grows in importance in our minds. We lose sight of other important things we should be doing. Some of our strategies for getting what we want become irrational, even fantastic.

In their book Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, behavioral scientists Eldar Shafir and Sendhil Mullainathan studied feelings of scarcity in poor people from different countries. When people cannot meet their basic needs, such as food and safety, that lack becomes central to their thinking. Because they do not have the resources to acquire the good in question and, more generally, to move out of poverty, they engage in practices that richer people see as “irrational.” They focus on short-term, even day-to-day, strategizing. Some drift into illegal behaviors. The search for compensating satisfactions may be of the risky, escapist sort.

As the authors stress, the rest of us aren’t so different from our poorer neighbors. We, too, can become preoccupied with what we don’t have and pursue irrational strategies to obtain these things (like playing the lottery or seeking crackpot investment schemes). The difference, of course, is that most of us have resource systems sufficient to meet our most basic needs and to keep us out of jail. We don’t go to loan sharks. Moreover, our conceptions of denied goods are more elaborate and nonessential (such as a fancy automobile or house at the beach).

A friend of mine, thoroughly middle-class, once confessed that he wanted to go into an upscale department store with a baseball bat so he could smash the most prized goods locked in the glass cases. Why? Because it bothered him so much that he couldn’t afford them. Gratefully, he didn’t do this. But the point is plain: Any of us can become obsessed with what we don’t have, even if it’s things we don’t really need.

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I’ll add, in fairness, that psychologists also emphasize the positive aspects of the scarcity mentality. Denial, and the frustration that attends this, can motivate serious, long-term strategies to reach one’s goal. That means making decisions about time, money, and other resources. We can go back to school, change our health and exercise habits, and move into different social circles. We can “invest” in the world we want to live in. True enough. But admit that such investment is much easier for those who already operate from a platform of social and economic stability.

Artificial scarcity

My mother’s joke about boys being like streetcars has a fatal flaw. A few of us may be content to have a significant other of any sort. But most of us want a person of a certain type (perhaps of an age, level of appearance, and social background like our own). More than that—and despite the encouragements of our friends, families, and, now, dating apps—we want a particular person. The fact that others may be “interested” in this person or see him or her as a “good catch” only increases our desire. Such is the psychology of scarcity.

The commitment to have what others in our reference groups value is part of our social nature. More precisely, it is a manifestation of our search for identity. Who doesn’t want to belong to a group of their choosing—and, in so doing, to take on its beliefs, standards, and forms of possession? Firmly ensconced in that group, most of us want to rise within it, to have a respected position and the resources that attend this.

Pointedly, many of these trappings are things we want rather than need. After all, how much different is one car, watch, or pair of pants from another? For such reasons, I call this “artificial” or “surplus” scarcity.

This condition is what our consumer culture exploits. Portraying life as a course or career, marketers show the path to advanced social standing, security, and well-being. An apartment of our own, a car, and a big TV show that we have arrived as fully fledged adults. Even if those products didn’t wear out (what used to be called “planned obsolescence”), we would still find that the next stage of life demands better or more extensive conditions. Surely, we want to keep up with our family members and friends. And advertisers warn us that supplies are shrinking fast—perhaps cabins on a cruise ship or properties at a mountain retreat. “Honey, maybe we should splurge.”

Reevaluating identity

Scarcity is a very real problem for those who do not have access to the basic forms of sustenance and security. For the rest of us, many of the things we hunger for are frivolities, essentially decorations for the self. One can argue that the upcoming trip to Europe and fancy automobile are rightful fruits of life’s labors (“We’ve worked hard and deserve this.”) But we should be honest that part of the pleasure is both the sense of privilege that the activity gives us and the satisfaction of regaling our friends with our exploits. We like the emotional burst that comes from the perception we have “made it.” However, none of this lets us evade the question of what we should be doing with our lives and how we should best allocate our resources. Our better selves know this.