A Subtle Manifestation of Stereotypes? Investigating Conspicuous Consumption

Scientific Essay from the year 2022 in the subject Sociology - Individual, Groups, Society, grade: 1,0, Copenhagen Business School, language: English, abstract: The objective of our study is twofold. Firstly, we aim to enhance the understanding of intergroup conflict, in particular, to illuminate subtle manifestations of discrimination that follow from ambiguous feelings toward outgroups. Secondly, we follow Crusius et al.¿s (2012) call for addressing the underlying psychological mechanisms that shape economic behavior, here in precise the phenomenon of CC.

For this purpose, we adopt a sociological perspective on prejudice which allows us to consider how individual psychology and behavior might be driven by social structures, specifically intergroup relations. We integrate theories of cognitive automatisms, emotions, stereotype formation, and group identity into a holistic framework and propose an empirical study to test the model. By doing so, we attempt to answer the following research question: Can conspicuous consumption in some cases be identified as a group-based bias mediated by envy?