Becoming a Mindful Consumer

As I have shared with readers in my last post, the first season of a podcast that I am co-hosting entitled “The Dark Side of Yoga” was recently made available online (check us out here: https://www.darksideofyoga.com/). I was having a conversation outside of the recording studio with the host and creator of the podcast, Kajuan Douglas, where we were discussing the difficulties that small business owners oftentimes face when competing against larger, more established or franchised competitors. So in the context of some of the issues we explore in our podcast, for instance, if the corporation in charge of a yoga studio is underpaying their teachers, or exploiting or sexually harassing them, and I continue to practice at this studio as a paying student, do I then carry some of the responsibility of the poor treatment of the teachers at the studio given that I am financially supporting the owners who are engaging in this problematic—and potentially criminal—behavior?

Our discussion led me to walk away from Douglas’ Merge New York studio—which, aptly, is a small yoga studio run by this creator and founder—with this larger question of, how much responsibility do consumers have regarding where and how they are spending their money?

Take, for instance, the burgeoning discussion within the larger culture in the wake of the #MeToo movement regarding whether we can—or should—separate the artist from his or her art. I don’t think I am the only person who gets a queasy feeling now when she watches old movies that have the mark of Miramax studios and feature Harvey Weinstein’s name prominently in the opening or ending credits. Or, to consider another issue, as a consumer am I complicit in the workers’ rights violations of a corporation if I knowingly continue to pay for their products even if they are produced using essentially slave labor? What responsibility do we harbor as consumers?

As a researcher who has been exploring the way that bystanders enable atrocities such as the Holocaust to happen, I am particularly sensitive to the notion that as individuals we have agency, and that our choices matter. Given the power attached to consumption within capitalist systems, one could argue that in a culture like ours the choices we make regarding how to spend our money is particularly influential from the perspective of incentivizing morally reprehensible versus pro-social behaviors.

There is this notion that millennials are more sensitive regarding their purchasing power, and that younger generations are more attuned to the values that corporations stand for, in addition to the quality of the products that they are mass marketing and selling. For instance, Curtin (2018) shares that 73% of millennials surveyed reported a willingness to spend more money on sustainable products. The writer goes on to share the values associated with this sentiment when she notes, “I’m willing to pay significantly more to support quality products and human rights, and put my money where my mouth is when it comes to creating a world in which I want to live” (Curtin, 2018, para. 18).

But what does the empirical research in the field of consumer behavior actually demonstrate? If I try to separate the art from the artist, and continue to consume Woody Allen films even as I suspect that he is guilty of the allegations of sexual molestation he was accused of by his daughter, will I feel guilty nonetheless? It is hard to find psychological research that has actually investigated these questions. I did uncover, however, a recent study published in the Journal of Personality & Social Psychology—one of the most reputable scientific journals within psychology—that reports a seeming moral malleability when it comes to conspicuous consumption among consumers. While they focus specifically on the notion of conspicuous consumption—defined as the excessive and indulgent exhibition of luxury goods and expensive items for purpose of presenting status and social impression—some of their findings regarding consumer behavior may be applied to other aspects of consumer choice.

Goenka & Thomas (2019) essentially propose that the perception of morality regarding conspicuous consumption is dependent upon what moral lens is used in regards to characteristics embedded in the behavior. In other words, consumers have fluidity regarding how consumption is interpreted when it comes to the purchase of luxury items or other products purchased essentially to signal status or impression management. Whether an individual or social identity lens is used alters the extent to which conspicuous consumption is judged negatively, or even potentially celebrated and seen as morally permissible. I wonder if such findings can also be generalized to other consumer decision-making—for instance, is it possible to find a moral argument in favor of consumption of entertainment or goods from corporations even after the creators or leaders within those companies have been found to engage in morally questionable, reprehensible or even criminal acts?

There is, of course, those who bemoan the “politicization” of entertainment and seemingly everything that a person does. Can’t I just watch a film or a sports game without reflecting on the values of the Hollywood studio that created the film or the larger institution running the game, this thread of thought goes. I suppose a consumer could spend their money without a second thought as to who is profiting or benefiting from their purchase, but is that the world we really want to live in? Do we really want to undermine our own purchasing power by being mindless consumers and not following the trail of what our money is supporting, other than the particular product or film that we may be watching? So much of our culture has already become curated and customized with the ubiquity of technology, do we want to further insulate our responsibility as citizens by spending our money without a second thought to who is profiting from our purchases?

It would behoove the field of psychology to take a closer look at the role that consumer values play in consumer choices, and the extent to which consumption has or can become more deliberate and aligned with consumer values. In sparking such a dialogue, it is my aspiration that we can become more mindful in the decisions we make with our money, particularly in cases when we have a choice to support a large corporation or franchise versus a local small business or start up.

Copyright Azadeh Aalai 2019