Social Psychology and Theories of Consumer Culture

A Political Economy Perspective

Matthew McDonald, Stephen Wearing

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135081492
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Social Psychology and Theories of Consumer Culture: A Political Economy Perspective presents a critical analysis of the leading positions in social psychology from the perspective of classical and contemporary theories of consumer culture. The analysis seeks to expand social psychological theory by focusing on the interface between modern western culture (consumer culture) and social behaviour.

McDonald and Wearing argue that if social psychology is to play a meaningful role in solving some of society's most pressing problems (e.g. global warming, obesity, addiction, alienation, and exclusion) then it needs to incorporate a more comprehensive understanding and analysis of consumer culture.

Wide-ranging and challenging, the book offers a fresh insight into critical social psychology appropriate for upper undergraduate and postgraduate courses in personality, social psychology, critical and applied psychology. It will also appeal to those working in clinical, counselling, abnormal, and environmental psychology and anyone with an interest in the integration of social psychology and theories of consumer culture.

1 Introduction

Social psychology and consumer culture

The purpose of this book is to critically analyse and expand the leading positions in social psychology from the perspective of classical and contemporary theories of consumer culture. We argue that a more comprehensive understanding of consumer culture would enable social psychology to once again play a meaningful role in solving some of the dilemmas that modern Western discourses, institutions and practices pose for individuals, groups and society at large, such as climate change, obesity, mental illness, alienation and urban/suburban planning.

We use the term social psychology in our inquiry to refer to ‘psychological social psychology’ as distinct from ‘sociological social psychology’. The other important distinction we make when using the term social psychology is that we are implicitly referring to ‘mainstream’ social psychology as opposed to ‘critical social psychology’ (e.g. Gough and McFadden, 2001; Hepburn, 2003; Ibanez and Iniguez, 1997; Tuffin, 2004). Much of our inquiry critiques mainstream social psychology; as such we frequently draw on insights from the critical social psychology literature, which provides an alternative perspective that supports our thesis.

The discipline of psychology, and by extension social psychology, has typically focused most of its attention on production (Moscovici, 1972), whereas consumption and its culture has often been trivialised (Kasser and Kanner, 2004). One reason for this is that production in the form of work, commerce and industry is emphasised by governments, policy-makers and academics, through legislation, public policy, research and its funding. In contrast, consumption is seen as an inconsequential activity engaged in during one's leisure time.¹ In the Protestant tradition consumption and leisure are seen as indulgent, decadent, feminine pursuits not worthy of serious intellectual analysis (Mackay, 1997; Ritzer et al., 2001; Scanlon, 2000b).

The activity of consumption has not been completely ignored by psychology. However, its research and theory on this topic is narrow in scope, focusing on the cognitive, affective and behavioural responses to products and services, and to their marketing and advertising – topics that collectively make up the field of ‘consumer psychology’ (Jacoby, 2001). Consumer psychology takes a ‘micro perspective’ on questions of consumption, producing a set of micro-theories on phenomena such as memory, perception, attitudes and decision-making. Topics of study include consumer preferences for colour combinations, whether an overweight waitress makes you eat more and the success of hybrids involving dissimilar products.

In contrast, the inquiry presented in this book takes a ‘macro perspective’ by focusing on the culture of consumption and its links with political economy.² Our focus on political economy is related more specifically to the role that neoliberal economics has played and currently plays in the maintenance of consumer culture in the West – a topic we will explore in more detail later in this chapter. Our focus on the broader political and economic structures of consumer culture will lead us into discussions on globalisation, commodification, lifestyle choice, the mass media, advertising, urban/suburban planning and alienation.

Research on economics and consumption in psychology generally falls within the remit of social psychology (Lunt, 1995). However, the uninitiated student of social psychology, whether at high school, college or university, would be hard pressed to find any reference to consumer culture in an introductory social psychology textbook. As Kasser and Kanner comment:

the discipline of psychology has been largely reticent about consumer culture … issues of consumerism, commercialization, and materialism have generally not entered the science or practice of psychology as key variables to be understood.

(2004: 4)

Kasser and Kanner argue there are three main reasons for this. The first is that psychology has been slow to focus on variables outside the individual person, focusing on intra-psychic processes instead³ (Kasser and Kanner, 2004: 4). This is reflected in social psychology's emphasis on ‘social cognition’ (Reicher and Wetherell, 1999). Social cognition analyses social behaviour through individual cognitive processes such as perception, memory, thinking and feeling. The emphasis on social cognition is complemented by a narrowly conceived methodological approach which stipulates that research incorporate experimental designs, the carrying out of multiple study packages and the prioritisation of mediational analysis through the use of secondary measures (Cialdini, 2009). Social psychology's focus on these elements and modes of research has led to the production of knowledge that rarely asks and answers socially relevant questions.

Social psychology's current obsession with social cognition is a departure from its traditional mission. It started out analysing and seeking to provide solutions to some of the most pressing social issues of the early to mid-twentieth century. Some of these included the Great Depression, immigration and political ideologies such as communism, fascism and democracy (Greenwood, 2004a; Pancer, 1997). Kurt Lewin, a pioneering social psychologist, favoured an applied focus, seeking to conduct research and generate theory that would influence public and social policy for the betterment and welfare of society (Moscovici, 1972; Pancer, 1997). However, during the 1950s and 1960s there was a move away from an applied focus in social psychology as it came to be seen as atheoretical and unscientific.⁴ The response to this seeming problem was to test theory under more rigorous conditions, by conducting laboratory experiments, which were viewed as more ‘scientific’ because variables could be controlled and observed under greater scrutiny. This change in emphasis was criticised by a number of social psychologists (a criticism that continues to the present day) who argued the subdiscipline has become less relevant to social behaviour in real-world settings owing to this change in direction (Armistead, 1974; Brewster-Smith, 1983; Cialdini, 2009; Greenwood, 2004b; Oishi et al., 2009; Pancer, 1997; Parker, 1989; Ring, 1967; Silverman, 1977). Moscovici notes:

social class structure, the phenomenon of language, the influence of ideas about society, all appear critically important and claim priority in the analysis of ‘collective’ conduct though they hardly make an appearance in contemporary social psychology..

(1972: 20)

As a consequence, social psychology has lost touch with everyday life. Buunk (2006: 84) writes that ‘when people do understand what social psychology is, they are usually interested in precisely those issues that today's social psychologists often shun’. Argyle (1992: p. xi) made a similar criticism when he wrote that social psychology lacked an applied focus, which had made it boring, abstract, and remote from real life.

The second point raised by Kasser and Kanner (2004: 4–5) is that psychology has tended to collude with consumerism⁵ by testing and developing theories designed to market products and services, communications and advertising, without questioning its benefits for individuals, families and society at large. Bowlby points out:

There is an intimate connection, institutionally and intellectually, between psychology and marketing during the first forty years of this century and beyond. As psychology became separated off from philosophy on the one hand and neurology on the other as an independent discipline, the primary questions with which it was concerned were often identical to those that preoccupied advertisers … psychologists at the time were laying out areas of investigation which overlap to a striking extent with those that concerned advertisers from a pragmatic point of view; and the developing institutional fields known as ‘consumer psychology’ or the ‘psychology of selling’.

(1993: 96)

This intimate connection that Bowlby refers to can be traced back to psychology's early days. For example, the psychologist Walter Dill Scott wrote two books at the turn of the twentieth century applying psychological theory to advertising: The Theory and Practice of Advertising published in 1903 and The Psychology of Advertising published in 1908. Both of Scott's books and the science of psychology generally, were ‘instrumental in professionalising the industry of sales and selling’ (Hansen et al., 2003: 48; see also Lynch, 1968: 152). John Watson was a similar example. Watson pioneered the school of behaviourism, which came to dominate the science of psychology in the early part of the twentieth century.⁶ In 1921 Watson, who had been a previous president of the American Psychological Association, left his academic post at John Hopkins University to join the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency where he eventually became Vice President. Watson was a major advocate of Thompson's corporate mission, which sought to replace traditional needs with modern consumer needs and desires (Cushman, 1995: 154– 6; Ewen, 1976/2001: 84–5; Thorne and Henley, 2005: 343–5). Ewen states:

Advertising directed some of its messages directly at children, preferring their ‘blank slate’ characters to those of their parents whose prejudices might be developed. J. B. Watson, the psychologist/ad man, had given underpinning to such a strategy. If the children were indoctrinated in the ‘behavioristic freedom’ which characterized the modern industrial world, he argued, business might be able to intervene in the values and definitions of culture.

(1976/2001: 143–4)

Like Scott and Watson, Edward Bernays (nephew of Sigmund Freud), pioneered techniques in public relations, advertising and marketing in order to influence public opinion in support of consumer lifestyles (Curtis, 2002; Ewen, 1976/2001: 83). Bernays used theories and research in social psychology (crowd psychology, persuasion) and psychoanalysis (the unconscious) to further corporate and political aims of mass persuasion. Like Gustav Le Bon, Bernays believed that individuals under the social influence of crowds have the potential to regress to more primitive, irresponsible and infantile states of mind, leading to violence and other forms of animalistic behaviour (Graumann, 2001: 11–13). The US government of the time was afraid of this danger within its growing urban population. Bernays, along with his colleague Walter Lippman, assisted the US government in managing this threat by setting in motion a series of programmes designed to ‘manufacture the consent’ of its urban population. In effect, these programmes used the latest thinking in persuasive communication techniques to link consumer products and services with unconscious desires, in an attempt to keep the urban population happy, quiet and docile (Curtis, 2002; Ewen, 1996; Hansen et al., 2003). Cushman adds:

The use of psychology in advertising was a development of major economic and cultural importance. It reflected a trend that had begun with mesmerism, had grown stronger with positive thinking and abundance theory, and shifted and finally co-opted psychoanalysis: the combination of liberation theory and the psychoanalytic unconscious, used in the service of corporate interests such as the management of labor and the manipulation of the consumer.

(1995: 154–5)

Psychology's long-running and intimate relationship with consumerism was summed up in a recent article published in The Psychologist (the monthly publication of the British Psychological Society) on the psychology of advertising, which noted that: ‘Psychology and the advertising industry have always had a close “personal” relationship’ (Florance et al., 2011: 462). This special relationship can be seen in the role that psychology has played in the development of advertising strategies and techniques throughout the twentieth century, which linked people's desires, passions, hopes and anxieties, with material comfort, pleasure and therapy (Cushman, 1995; McDonald et al., 2008; Miller and Rose, 1997). This collusion with consumer culture is rarely questioned by psychologists, because of their belief, some might argue illusion, that psychology is a politically neutral science. This apolitical stance has blinded social psychologists to the potentially pernicious effects of the mass media and advertising, and the internalisation of consumerist values.

There is also the issue of studying consumption at the level of cognition, which has narrowed psychology's analysis in this sphere, so that its research and theories typically focus on issues of ‘consumer choice’ and the preferences that determine these (Bowlby, 1993). This particular approach to understanding consumption fails to connect with much useful work carried out in other areas of social science that go beyond an individual's cognition by seeking to understand the ways in which consumption is linked to broader social and cultural forces (e.g. neoliberalism, the mass media, advertising, globalisation) in Western society, whose influence on social behaviour is profound. Moreover, there is a need to engage with fundamental debates in the wider social sciences about the benefits and drawbacks of consumerism. Moscovici notes:

It is only the exploration of new realities that will enable social psychology to progress and will take it out of the restricted framework of commercial and industrial activities within which it is confined at present.

(1972: 65)

Kasser and Kanner's (2004: 5) third point is that psychology has generally taken an ambivalent attitude towards social policy and social criticism. While some movements and schools in psychology have shown a preparedness to engage in these activities (e.g. critical psychology, humanistic psychology, community psychology and discursive psychology), the science of psychology as a whole has not sought to precipitate or influence social policy or social change. Since the Second World War psychopathology and the study of its treatment (abnormal and clinical psychology) has become one of the largest areas of research in the psychological sciences in terms of research funding and scientific publication. While abnormal and clinical psychology acknowledges historical, social, cultural, political and economic factors that contribute to mental distress, they rarely discuss these in depth or seek to influence political or policy processes that may create conditions for their change (Fox et al., 2009). The problem here as Fromm notes is that social psychologists want us to believe that:

contemporary Western society and more especially, the ‘American way of life’ corresponds to the deepest needs of human nature and that adjustment to this way of life means mental health and maturity, social psychology, instead of being a tool for the criticism of society, thus becomes the apologist for the status quo.

(1956/1991: 71)

Kasser and Kanner (2004: 5) argue that psychology's unwillingness to analyse the broader political and economic aspects of consumer culture is a good example of its general attitude towards social policy debates and social criticism in general. The authors evidence this with an anecdote about a journal article they submitted to a psychology journal on materialism that was rejected, in part, because one of the reviewers along with the journal editor felt the findings were anti-capitalistic, and that their research was the sort that the conservative right in the United States frequently points to when it wants to cut research funding. In many ways this anecdote sums up the current state of play with regards to social psychology's attitude towards the political and economic aspects of consumer culture.

So what is consumer culture? What influence does it play in our everyday lives, and how has it been conceptualised? In the following section we will introduce the concept of consumer culture by discussing its prominence in our day-to-day lives. We will then conduct a brief definitional review of the concept, as an entrée to a deeper more extended review of the theories of consumer culture to be presented in Chapter 2.

Consumer culture

Consumption and everyday life

It has to be made clear from the outset that consumption is an active form of relationship (not only to objects, but also to society and to the world), a mode of systematic activity and global response which founds our entire cultural system.

(Baudrillard, 1968/1996: 217)

The purchase of a consumer product or service has become such a common and unremarkable aspect of everyday life that most of us barely think about it. Yet consumption and its culture has become an integral facet of social life in modern Western society and the central means by which individuals communicate self-identity. It is often invoked by politicians as a means to express citizenship, patriotism and national pride during periods of crisis. The quantity and quality of our acquisitions are often used to measure our success or otherwise in life. Consumer products and services function as a basis for social groupings and as a means to acquire membership to them. They stimulate imagination, envy and desire, and contribute to psychological distress as much as they provide pleasure, satisfaction and the means to pursue freedom through choice. Last but not least, consumer culture has come to determine the design and organisation ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Theories of consumer culture
• 3 Self-identity in consumer culture
• 4 Emotional and behavioural problems in consumer culture
• 5 Consumer culture and space
• 6 Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index