Women's Luxury Products as Signals to Other Women

TLDR: Wang and Griskevicius as discussed by the authors reported that women flaunt luxury products to signal their partners' devotion, thereby guarding their relationships from rivals, and found that perceived partner contribution to possessions was higher for designer products.

Abstract: We present two preregistered replications of the paper by Wang and Griskevicius (2014), which reported that women flaunt luxury products to signal their partners' devotion, thereby guarding their relationships from rivals. In Study 1, which was a conceptual replication with real luxury brands, we did not observe an effect of luxury products on partner devotion but found that women assumed that male partners contribute financial resources to women's luxury possessions. In Study 2, which was a direct replication with designer products, we observed a small-sized effect in the opposite direction, such that perceived partner devotion increased when women used nondesigner products. Similar to Study 1, perceived partner contribution to possessions was higher for designer products. (Less)

Figures

Table 2: Correlation coefficients between the variables and interaction term (meancentered) in the moderation analyses.

Figure 1: Comparison of perceived devotion and partner contribution variables between experimental conditions in Study 1.

Figure 2: Comparison of perceived devotion and partner contribution variables between experimental conditions in Study 2.

Table 1: Comparison between the original experiment (Wang & Griskevicius, 2014, Study 1) and the replication experiment (Study 1).

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the contributions mentioned in the paper "Replication note: women's luxury products as signals to other women" ?

The authors present two preregistered replications of the paper by Wang and Griskevicius ( 2014 ), which reported that women flaunt luxury products to signal their partners ’ devotion, thereby guarding their relationships from rivals. 

Q2. What future works have the authors mentioned in the paper "Replication note: women's luxury products as signals to other women" ?

To eliminate this possibility, the authors conducted Study 2, a direct replication with designer ( vs. nondesigner ) products. One possibility is desirability bias. Another possibility is that women with luxury possessions were implicitly perceived to have materialistic traits, and the participants did not believe that the partner was devoted to a highly materialistic person. Future studies should further scrutinize the boundary conditions of the relationship between luxury products and partner devotion.