Shiny Objects

James A. Roberts

• Publisher: HarperOne
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780062093622
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Popkultur

In Shiny Objects, a cross between In Praise of Slowness and The Tipping Point, consumer behavior expert Professor James A. Roberts takes us on a tour of America's obsession with consumerism—pointing out its symptoms, diagnosing specific problems, and offering a series of groundbreaking solutions.

Roberts gives practical advice for how to correct the materialistic trends in our lives which lock us into a cycle of financial hardship and stress. Shiny Objects, a new The Paradox of Choice for the modern reader, is more than a critique of capitalism—it's also an exploration into how we can live happier, fuller, more productive lives today.

Chapter 1
Shiny Objects

The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.

—H. L. MENCKEN

Shiny object (

¹): anything that distracts the easily amused.

A “dog’s life” never sounded so good. Forget about sleeping outside—42 percent of dogs now sleep with their owners and dine on organically grown meat, vegan snacks, and other gourmet treats. Many even get presents on their birthdays. Americans currently spend $48 billion a year on their pets. That’s double the amount spent ten years ago and is more than the gross domestic product (GDP) of all but sixty-four countries. Spending on our furry friends is expected to top $58 billion in the next few years.

As a loving pet owner, you can splurge $535 on a dog ramp by Puppy Stairs to help your best friend make the ascent to your bed, $30 on an ounce of puppy perfume, and $225 on a trench coat for the family pooch. And let’s not forget about doggie slippers, bikinis, and $500 Chanel pearls for those big nights out. What about a $270 Furrari bed for the little guy? Pet owners are also spending big on drugs to fight depression and separation anxiety in pets, as well as on psychological counseling, high-tech medical procedures, various cosmetic procedures, and end-of-life care. Plastic surgeons offer nose jobs, face lifts, breast reductions, braces, and tummy tucks for man’s best friend. Nearly $10 billion is spent annually in the United States on veterinary services alone. Americans spend an additional $10 billion on over-the-counter drugs and supplies.

All doubt as to whether pet pampering is out of control ends with Neuticles, a patented testicular implant that fetches nearly one thousand dollars for a set of two. After pets have been neutered, Neuticles allows owners to “restore their pets to anatomical preciseness,” and “preserve both their natural look and their self-esteem” according to inventor Gregg A. Miller who has sold more than 240,000 pairs of these little gems. Prosthetic testicles for your canine companion—only in America.²

PET PARAPHERNALIA IS ONLY THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG. WE ARE A NATION IN love with shiny objects. Our homes, our cars, our offices, our purses, and that storage unit we hate to admit to are all overflowing with our precious belongings. Whether your personal weakness is shoes, cars, jewelry, cigars, or any other possession (vintage posters, books, and watches are my downfall), we Americans love our stuff.

When it comes to spending money, are you more of a tightwad or a spendthrift? You’ll have a chance to measure for yourself in chapter 5. Given that we are a nation of consumers, you might be surprised to learn that the majority of Americans would be classified as tightwads. With a high percentage of people living from paycheck to paycheck, how can consumerism be so rampant? It all boils down to how we pay for our purchases and the “pain of paying” associated with each payment method— it’s not that tightwads don’t want to spend money, they just don’t want to feel like they’re spending money. We are a nation addicted to plastic. Using credit cards greatly reduces the pain associated with paying for our purchases—so much so, in fact, that credit cards have earned the nickname “spending facilitators” by those of us who do research in this area. When we use credit cards, we make quicker purchase decisions, are more likely to buy, and are willing to pay more.

But can credit cards make us fat?³ The answer to this question is an unqualified yes. When we use credit cards instead of cash at fast-food restaurants, we spend anywhere from 60 to 100 percent more. The average bill at McDonald’s, for example, increased from $4.50 to $7.00 when customers started using credit cards instead of cash.⁴ I call this the “supersize effect” of credit cards. If credit cards can expand your waistline or fatten your thighs, imagine what they can do to your household finances.

As a professor at Baylor University, I have spent over twenty years conducting research with thousands of consumers from all walks of life on the related areas of materialism, credit card use, and compulsive buying. Why, in a land of plenty, do Americans want more? And why is more never enough? Given that most Americans would readily admit that money and material possessions are not going to make us happy, why do we continue to act as if they will? This book is the culmination of my efforts and those of other researchers to answer such questions. And though consumers are inscrutable, we have begun to unlock some of the mysteries behind materialism and its impact on our lives.

As this book details, our obsession with possessions has a significant impact on our well-being. When asked what we really care about and what we consider to be the most life-giving elements of our existence, the vast majority of people respond in terms of the lasting value we place on our relationships with family and friends. And yet our consumer behavior contradicts such professed values. Our real habits—the time and resources we devote to accumulating more stuff—tell a different story. As the old saying goes, if you want to know what someone really cares about, look at that person’s bank account.

It is my hope that reading this book will give you the time, space, and motivation to examine your day-to-day behavior in a way that our hectic lives rarely allow. Some of the studies and statistics I’ll share may surprise you. Some may sound like they’re describing someone else. But they all speak to one undeniable truth: as consumers, we’re not who we think we are. It’s time to bridge the gap between what we say and what we do. It’s time to recommit ourselves to the kind of pursuits that are the true source of our well-being: spending time with loved ones, reaching our full potential as human beings, and participating actively in our world. No small task, but one well worth the effort: our happiness lies in the balance.

LIVING IN A MATERIAL WORLD

Our current consumer culture is best understood as an environment in which the majority of consumers avidly desire, pursue, consume, and display goods and services that are valued for non-utilitarian reasons such as status, envy, provocation, and pleasure-seeking.⁵ Whether you reside in a major metropolitan city or a rural outpost of North America, you are part of the worldwide consumer culture. To ignore the importance of material possessions in our lives would be equivalent to ignoring that we are born of mothers and fathers.

The emergence of a worldwide consumer culture has potentially severe consequences for everyone. As you will soon see, even if you don’t practice or espouse materialistic ideals, you are affected by others’ pursuit of them. A good example might be the ghost of a recent Christmas past for retailing giant Walmart.

Surely a man the size of Walmart worker Jdimytai Damour could control the expected Black Friday shopping crowds. At six feet five inches and 270 pounds, he was a force to reckon with. In fact, he was chosen to work the front entrance to the Walmart store at the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream, New York, precisely because of his hulking frame. But, alas, he was no match for the crowd of 2,000 Walmart shoppers eagerly awaiting the 5:00 a.m. store opening. A few minutes before store opening the throng could no longer be held back. The sliding glass doors that separated the would-be shoppers from the myriad of holiday bargains (“door busters” takes on a whole new meaning) bowed from the bodies pressed against them. Six to ten workers attempted to no avail to push back, but they were fighting a losing battle. In an instant, the glass doors shattered and the frenzied mob surged into the store in search of the heavily discounted “doorbusters” available in limited quantities for a short period of time. Tragically, Mr. Damour was thrown to the floor and trampled to death (the official cause of death being asphyxiation related to his trampling) in the stampede that streamed over him in pursuit of bargains on big-screen TVs, electronics, clothing, and a myriad of other consumer goodies. One shopper, Kimberly Cribbs of Queens, said that the crowd acted like “savages.” And the shoppers’ bad behavior didn’t end with the trampling of Mr. Damour. When the shoppers were informed that the store would need to be cleared because of the death of an employee, many continued to shop, yelling that they had been waiting in line since the day before. Many had to be escorted from the store.⁶

The Oxford English Dictionary defines materialism, in that word’s common usage, as “devotion to material needs and desires, to the neglect of spiritual matters; a way of life, opinion, or tendency based entirely upon material interests.” I think of materialism as a mind-set, an interest in getting and spending, the worship of things, the overriding importance that someone attaches to worldly possessions. For a consumer who has fully embraced shiny objects, possessions take center stage and are considered to be the primary source of all happiness. Money and material possessions are seen as an end in themselves, rather than as a means to an end. Materialism is the cornerstone of our modern consumer culture.

We Americans attempt to find happiness and satisfaction through the acquisition of possessions, which typically assume a central role in our life. Of course, not all Americans are equally materialistic, but on average we are a materialistic lot. Those of us who are highly materialistic (let’s use the term “materialists”) believe that expanded levels of consumption will increase the amount of pleasure we achieve in life. Research, however, paints a bleak picture for happiness through acquisition, consistently showing that those of us who live materialistic lifestyles are less happy with our lives than less materialistic people are. On average, U.S. consumers are no happier than less profligate consumers around the world. I will have more to say about the materialism–happiness relationship in chapter 4.

Materialists tend to judge their own and others’ success by the number and quality of accumulated possessions. The primary value of possessions, for diehard materialists, is their ability to confer status and project a desired self-image. Materialists view themselves and others as successful only to the extent that they possess products that project a desired image. How successful can my colleague be, they wonder, driving a car like that, or living in that neighborhood? Judging others by what they possess is a deeply ingrained part of our collective psyche.

In our rush, rush world, a common way we tell others who we are (or would like to be) is through our use and display of material possessions. He drives a Mercedes, so he must be a captain of industry. A truck and he must be a cowboy or at least a rugged individualist. A Hummer, and . . . I’m not sure what that says about the driver. This tendency to define ourselves by the products we consume results in what researchers call the “extended self”; in other words, our possessions become an extension of who we are. I amend the label to the “overextended self” when referring to consumers who have fully embraced the shiny-objects ethos. Research has found that highly materialistic people value their possessions for their ability to conjure up a desired social image, whereas their less materialistic brethren value their stuff for the pleasure and comfort it provides. Furthermore, as you’ve probably noticed with your more pretentious acquaintances, materialistic people are more likely than less materialistic people to mention an item’s financial value when describing why it’s important to them: “That cost me nearly $30,000!”

Not only do a person’s materialistic values affect how he or she relates to possessions, but they also affect how that person spends money. Compared to less materialistic people, materialists believe that they require more money to satisfy their “needs” and are more likely to spend money on themselves and friends and donate less to charities.

The “Great Recession” of 2008/2009 and the continuing economic malaise have the average folks on Main Street on edge regarding their financial future. With high unemployment, mortgages being forfeited, and credit being tightened, it’s likely that Americans will be spending less this year—and that’s a terrifying thought for citizens who have been taught that shopping is a patriotic act. We live in a country where we are repeatedly told that happiness can be purchased at the mall, online, or from a catalog,⁷ so the idea of scaling back on our purchases is frightening. But I’ve got some good news to share: happiness is not positively correlated with consumption.

Between 1972 and 2010, the standard of living in America increased dramatically. When we produce more, we consume more⁸, and within that time period, our national output per capita increased by 96 percent. But while our standard of living has improved over the past thirty to thirty-five years, our happiness has not. In fact, as the graph on the previous page depicts very clearly, our happiness has flatlined. Based on surveys of over 50,000 people conducted by the General Social Survey (GSS), the graph shows that the number of people reporting that they are “pretty happy” has varied little. So what does this mean? It means that more stuff does not necessarily make us any happier. And this particular study paints a “rosier picture” than other research findings—alternate surveys reveal that the more we spend the less happy we are.

U.S. GDP and Happiness, 1972–2010:
What’s Wrong with This Picture?

GDP for earlier years has been adjusted to current dollars. Happiness data was taken from the General Social Survey (GSS)⁹ of over 50,000 people and represents the percentage of people who responded “pretty happy” to the question: “Taken all together, how would you say things are these days—would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?”

In the chapters to come I will reveal surprising studies that showca...