20 Apr Should we stop referring to people as ‘consumers’?
The term “consumers” is routinely used in place of “people” and “citizens”. While most people (consumers?) don’t notice or care much about the terms being used interchangeably, there are those who resent being labelled as “consumers,” as if their sole purpose and reason for existence on this planet is to consume — to eat, drink, use, watch, and buy stuff, and keep the economy humming along.
Now, a new psychological study indicates that it may be in everyone’s interest if we stop referring to (insulting?) people as mere consumers.
A team of researchers led by Galen Bodenhausen, a professor of psychology and marketing at Northwestern University, has published the results of a new study about materialism and happiness in the journal Psychological Science. Among the familiar findings — money can’t buy happiness, and material possessions don’t make us happy either — is one concerning the use of the word “consumer”.
In one of the study’s tests, participants were presented with the following hypothetical scenario: There is a water shortage, and four people (including the participants) must share a well. Sometimes in the experiment, participants were called “consumers,” and other times they were referred to as “individuals.” And apparently, words can be powerful.
When participants were labelled as “consumers,” they were more likely to selfishly focus on their own individual consumption:
The “consumers” rated themselves as less trusting of others to conserve water, less personally responsible and less in partnership with the others in dealing with the crisis. The consumer status, the authors concluded, “did not unite; it divided.”
“It’s become commonplace to use consumer as a generic term for people,” said Bodenhausen, but a “subtle difference activates different psychological concerns” depending on whether “consumer” is used, as opposed to the more neutral terms “Americans,” “citizens,” or “people.”
When we view ourselves and each other first and foremost as materialistic “consumers,” the researchers say that the results are a more depressed, anxious population and a more antisocial, isolated society. Basically, you want to live in a place filled with everyday people, not surrounded by desperate, ultra-selfish consumers who are all battling it out over precious resources in some ugly post-apocalyptic world that resembles Black Friday at the mall…..