Fluent Essays

The assignmentFor each project, you will be given a news story and a scientific journal article that goes with it, posted to Canvas by the instructor. Each of these journal articles will have been published in a reputable online magazine, newspaper, or journal. The news story may or may not be.You will then write a short essay, 2-3 full pages in length, detailing the parts of the scientific method discussed in your article and comparing that information to what was reported in the news story. Each entry will be written in a logical and professional manner using the APA template attached to the post.The entire entry must be written IN YOUR OWN WORDS. Direct quotes of the articles are not allowed. However, when you summarize or paraphrase something from one of the articles you will need to provide an in-text APA reference. The guide to APA referencing is attached to this post.The essay must be written entirely in third person. DO NOT USE FIRST OR SECOND PERSON. This means you cannot use the words “I”, “we”, or “you”.What is turned in to the instructor?For each week that a journal assignment is due, you will submit your journal entry via Canvas by its due date.Entry Content You will be graded on the following content that combines information you obtain from both the news story and the scientific article:Introduction (1 paragraph)This section identify which of the two articles was the scientific study and the subject of the scientific study. You will also identify the problem or observation that spurred the research. DO NOT LIST THE RESULTS OF THE STUDY ITSELF HERE. You will identify the hypothesis the scientists were testing. Remember that a hypothesis is a testable educated guess. Thus, it is not appropriate to pose a question here. However, while reading your articles, it can be helpful to ask yourself what explanation scientists tried to use to explain their initial observation. You will then transition into the body of the journal.Body (~1 paragraph each)Here, you will identify the test or experiment that was performed to address the hypothesis. You should be detailed here. It may be helpful to pull from other sources, if you do not fully understand how the experiment was conducted. After detailing how the experiment was done compared to how it reported in the media, you will transition into a discussion of the results. In this section of your entry you will identify the experimental results that the scientists obtained. What did the scientists find after doing their experiment? Again, you can be detailed here. After detailing the results, you will transition into the conclusion sections.The last paragraph of the body should explain the conclusion of the study. You should address whether the hypothesis was supported or rejected, and how the results led to that finding. Also provide a possible new avenue of research the scientists might pursue based on what was discovered in this study.Evaluation (1 paragraph)Here you will signal the end of your entry. In this section you will identify the new study about the scientific study and discuss whether or not the news story was a representative reporting of the scientific study. Did the news change anything or leave out something important from the scientific study? Summarize the important content from your entry, then you will end with a definitive final statement. Constructing your journal entry In addition to the criteria above, you will be graded on the quality of your writing; please write with proper grammar, punctuation, and style. The essay will be graded using the Dialogues of Learning Written Communication Rubric.All sources (including the original 2 articles) should be properly documented. You must include an APA style reference page. Your TurnItIn score handbags_article.pdf handbags_2.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview Conspicuous Consumption, Relationships, and Rivals: Women’s Luxury Products as Signals to Other Women YAJIN WANG VLADAS GRISKEVICIUS Past research shows that luxury products can function to boost self-esteem, express identity, and signal status. We propose that luxury products also have important signaling functions in relationships. Whereas men use conspicuous luxury products to attract mates, women use such products to deter female rivals. Drawing on both evolutionary and cultural perspectives, five experiments investigated how women’s luxury products function as a signaling system directed at other women who pose threats to their romantic relationships. Findings showed that activating a motive to guard one’s mate triggered women to seek and display lavish possessions. Additional studies revealed that women use pricey possessions to signal that their romantic partner is especially devoted to them. In turn, flaunting designer handbags and shoes was effective at deterring other women from poaching a relationship partner. This research identifies a novel function of conspicuous consumption, revealing that luxury products and brands play important roles in relationships. A teem, express one’s identity, and signal status (e.g., Belk 1985; Han et al. 2010; Richins 1987; Veblen 1899). Brandishing a designer handbag or a luxury watch, for example, is often used to convey a person’s level of prestige. But there is reason to believe that luxury products play an important role in another ubiquitous part of life—relationships. For instance, studies examining men’s conspicuous consumption have found that men’s displays of luxury goods serve as a “sexual signaling system” to attract romantic partners (Griskevicius et al. 2007; Sundie et al. 2011). Here we consider whether women’s luxury products might also play an important role in relationships. Unlike for men, whose luxury goods often serve as signals to potential mates, we propose that women’s luxury possessions often serve as signals to other women. We investigate the idea that women’s flaunting of designer products functions as a signaling system directed at same-sex rivals who pose a threat to a woman’s relationship. We hypothesize that some women use pricey possessions to signal to other women that their romantic partner is especially devoted to them. In turn, flaunting designer handbags and shoes helps women deter romantic rivals from poaching their relationship partner. We investigate this idea in five experiments, which test which factors trigger women to seek conspicuous luxury possessions, what signals such possessions send to designer handbag found on the shelves of stores such as Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, or Nordstrom costs anywhere from several hundred to several thousand dollars. Yet American woman acquire on average three new handbags each year (Bev and Zolenski 2011), prominently flaunting designer brands such as Fendi, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, Christian Dior, Prada, and Chanel (Han, Nunes, and Drèze 2010). In the United States alone, spending on luxury goods amounts to as much as $525 billion per year (Bev and Zolenski 2011), with women’s products accounting for over half of this consumption (D’Arpizio 2012). Given women’s passion for pricey possessions, why do women desire luxury goods? Considerable research has examined why people seek luxury products, finding that such products can boost self-es- Yajin Wang (wang0936@umn.edu) is a PhD student in marketing and Vladas Griskevicius (vladasg@umn.edu) is associate professor of marketing and psychology at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, 321 19th Ave S. Suite 3-150, Minneapolis, MN 55455. Address correspondence to Yajin Wang. The authors gratefully acknowledge the very helpful input of the editor, associate editor, and reviewers. Ann McGill served as editor and Jaideep Sengupta served as associate editor for this article. Electronically published August 29, 2013 834 䉷 2013 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc. ● Vol. 40 ● February 2014 All rights reserved. 0093-5301/2014/4005-0003$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/673256 WANG AND GRISKEVICIUS other women, and whether these signals are effective at altering other women’s behavior. This research makes a contribution by identifying a novel function of conspicuous consumption, revealing how women’s luxury products and brands play an important role in relationships. LUXURY PRODUCTS From $300 designer shoes and $10,000 outdoor grills, to $20,000 Sub-Zero freezers and $5,000 necklaces, each year consumers spend billions of dollars on luxury products— relatively expensive products that provide increased prestige without providing additional utilitarian value. Considerable past research has investigated why people desire luxury products. People sometimes seek such goods for intrinsic benefits to the self, whereby luxury goods can provide a better sense of self and boost a person’s self-esteem (Belk 1988; Berger and Heath 2007; Douglas and Isherwood 1978; Holt 1998; Sivananthan and Pettit 2010; Solomon 1983). For example, some individuals believe that having luxury goods will make them happier and more fulfilled (Belk 1985; Richins 1987), and this is especially true when individuals feel deprived (Charles, Hurst, and Roussanov 2009). People also seek luxury products because such possessions can signal important information to others (Belk, Bahn, and Mayer 1982; Richins 1994). The tendency to purchase and exhibit expensive goods is known as conspicuous consumption (Veblen 1899), whereby luxury goods—and luxury brands—are often used to communicate a person’s wealth or level of prestige (Bagwell and Bernheim 1996; Han et al. 2010; Mazzocco et al. 2012; Rucker, Galinsky, and Dubois 2012; Wernerfelt 1990; Wilcox, Kim, and Sen 2009). For example, expensive products can convey the owner’s status or good taste, and this signal could be directed to a general audience or to select individuals important to the signaler (Berger and Ward 2010; Han et al. 2010; Wernerfelt 1990). The current research builds on the idea that conspicuous luxury possessions can signal information to others. Here we focus on examining whether luxury products might have important and unique signaling functions specific to relationships. RELATIONSHIPS AND LUXURY PRODUCTS Relatively little consumer research has considered the roles of products and brands in relationships. Some work in this area has examined gift giving, generally showing that men spend considerable resources on gifts to women (Belk and Coon 1993; Heilman, Kaefer, and Ramenofsky 2012; Jonason et al. 2009; Joy 2001; Rugimbana et al. 2002; Saad and Gill 2003; Sarett 1960). Other work has focused on joint decision making in relationships, investigating how husbands and wives make important spending decisions (Davis 1970, 1971; Filiatrault and Ritchie 1980; Kirchler 1993; Rick, Small, and Finkel 2011; Simpson, Griskevicius, and Rothman 2012). Here we consider the role of luxury products in relationships. 835 Luxury goods are known to serve an important function in relationships for men by helping to attract romantic partners (Griskevicius et al. 2007; Janssens et al. 2011; Sundie et al. 2011). Given that ostentatious displays of wealth have been occurring across the globe for millennia, men’s tendency to seek and display luxury possessions is believed to have enhanced their reproductive fitness (Miller 2009; Saad 2007). Consistent with this idea, studies find that merely activating a mate attraction motive automatically triggers men to pay more attention to expensive products (Janssens et al. 2011), choose more luxurious brands (Sundie et al. 2011), and pay more money for conspicuous luxury products (Griskevicius et al. 2007). In turn, men who flaunt luxury goods are seen as more sexually attractive by women (Sundie et al. 2011). But while men’s flaunting of luxury products is known to have an important function in relationships, it is unclear whether women’s tendency to display luxury goods serves any purpose when it comes to relationships. If it does, it is unlikely to be the same purpose as for men—to attract mates. In six separate studies, activating a desire to attract a mate in women had no effect on women’s desire for conspicuous luxury products (Griskevicius et al. 2007; Sundie et al. 2011). However, this lack of findings for women does not mean that women’s luxury products have no function in relationships. Instead, as we discuss next, women’s luxury products may have a very different function than men’s. RELATIONSHIPS AND MATE GUARDING Relationship research reveals that having a successful relationship involves solving at least two central challenges (Griskevicius, Haselton, and Ackerman, forthcoming). First, having a relationship requires attracting a mate. But because many relationships do not end after a mate is merely attracted, successful relationships involve solving a second challenge: retaining that mate (Buss 1988; Buss and Shackelford 1997). Research in biology and anthropology shows that after a romantic partner has been attracted, keeping that partner and staying together in a relationship contributed significantly to enhancing reproductive fitness (Hill and Hurtado 1996). The challenge of retaining a mate is not only distinct from the challenge of attracting a mate, but mate retention is considered to be a “fundamental” human evolutionary problem (Griskevicius and Kenrick 2013; Kenrick et al. 2010). A central component of solving the challenge of mate retention is mate guarding, which involves managing the threat of romantic competitors (Campbell and Ellis 2005). Individuals engage in mate guarding when they sense a threat to their romantic relationship. For example, a mate guarding motive can be triggered by jealousy, such as when another person starts to flirt with one’s romantic partner (Sheets, Fredendall, and Claypool 1997). Activating a mate guarding motive leads people to scan the environment for potential interlopers who might pose a threat to the relationship (Maner et al. 2007). For instance, whereas acti- 836 vating a mate attraction motive leads people to be more attentive to attractive members of the opposite sex (Maner et al. 2005), activating a mate guarding motive leads people to be more attentive to attractive members of the same sex, who represent potential threats to the relationship (Maner et al. 2009). Mate guarding has been particularly important for women over evolutionary history (Buss and Schmitt 1993; Buss et al. 1992). Because successful reproduction has required women to expend considerable time and energy to gestate offspring and provide nutrition via nursing, women have historically been more dependent on a relationship partner to help contribute resources to her and her offspring (Hurtado et al. 1992; Kaplan et al. 2000; Marlowe 2003). Women have also historically incurred higher reproductive costs when a relationship partner fails to provide (Geary 2000; Hurtado and Hill 1992). For example, when another woman poaches a woman’s relationship partner, the man may divert valuable resources to the other woman or abandon the older relationship altogether. Women are therefore likely to be particularly motivated to guard relationships against mate poachers. WOMEN’S LUXURY PRODUCTS AS A SIGNALING SYSTEM TO OTHER WOMEN The threat of mate poaching continues to be a pervasive challenge in contemporary society (Thompson 1983; Wiederman 1997). To guard their relationship partner from being poached, women use a variety of tactics (Buss 1988). For example, women can directly confront the would-be poacher (Buss and Shackelford 1997). But women also often use more subtle tactics to guard their mate. For example, studies show that mate poachers are less likely to pursue a taken man when he is highly devoted to his relationship partner (Schmitt and Buss 2001). This suggests that an effective mate guarding tactic for a woman is to convey to other women that her partner cares for her deeply and is committed to the relationship (Buss 1988). We propose that women use luxury products to signal to other women that their romantic partner is especially devoted to them. We hypothesize that women’s flaunting of luxury possessions therefore functions as an intrasexual signaling system: women use luxury products to send signals to other women in order to deter those other women from poaching their romantic partner. The current research investigates whether such a system exists and how it works. Pilot Study: Women’s Own Beliefs about Luxury Products and Relationships For women to use luxury goods to signal that their partner is devoted to them, at least some women must believe that their own luxury goods can signal this kind of information. To examine if any women actually possess this lay belief, we surveyed 76 women (Mage p 33.46, SD p 11.27) on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk). The women were JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH asked to “Imagine you are in a relationship and you go to a social event with your partner.” They then responded to four different yes/no questions regarding whether the women themselves believed that other women would infer that their relationship partner was more devoted to them based on the outfit and jewelry that the woman chose to wear. Specifically, the women were asked: “Do you think some women might judge that your partner cares about you more [is more committed to you] when they see you wearing a designer [more expensive] outfit and jewelry?” Results showed that more than half of the women indicated that they believe that other women would infer that their relationship partner was more devoted to them based on their own outfit and jewelry. Specifically, a majority of women believed that other women would infer that a more expensive outfit and jewelry indicates that their partner cares more about them (61.8\%) and is more committed (53.9\%). Similarly, a majority of women believed that other women would infer that a designer outfit and jewelry indicates that their partner cares more about them (52.6\%) and is more committed (55.3\%). The findings from the pilot study indicate that over half of the women surveyed believe that their own displays of luxury products can be used to signal to other women how much their partner is devoted to them. This belief was held at similarly high levels regardless of whether the women were currently single, dating, in a committed relationship, or married (all p 1 .43). Thus, a substantial portion of women have a lay belief that luxury goods can indicate how much their partner is devoted to them, providing initial support for the possibility that women’s luxury goods can function as a signaling system to other women in the service of mate guarding. Do Receivers Accurately Decipher the Signal? For a signaling system to work, receivers must be able to accurately decipher the signal. This means that other women must be able to discern information about the devotion level of a male romantic partner based on the luxuriousness of his female partner’s products. There is good reason to believe that other women are likely to infer this kind of information. Men across cultures spend considerable resources to attract and secure a relationship partner (Buss 1988; Jonason et al. 2009; Sundie et al. 2011), with gift giving being essential to enduring romantic relationships (Huang and Yu 2000). This suggests that a substantial portion of a woman’s possessions may reflect her partner’s investment in the relationship (Heilman et al. 2012; Joy 2001; Rugimbana et al. 2002). This is important because a man’s willingness to spend and invest resources in a mate is considered a strong indicator of his commitment to the relationship (Buss and Schmitt 1993). Thus, women’s possessions such as expensive handbags, luxurious jewelry, and designer shoes are likely to lead other women to infer a higher level of devotion from her relationship partner. Formally: WANG AND GRISKEVICIUS H1: A woman with luxurious possessions should be perceived by other women as having a more devoted partner. Are Women Motivated to Send the Signal in Appropriate Contexts? For a signaling system to work, senders must send the signal in the appropriate context. This means that women should be particularly motivated to seek and display luxury possessions specifically when their relationship is threatened by another woman. Because female mate poachers are less likely to pursue a committed man, an effective mate guarding tactic for women should be to signal to other women that their partner is deeply committed to them. Given that many women believe that luxury goods can indicate to other women how much their partner is devoted to them (see the pilot study above), the desire for conspicuous luxury products should be particularly strong when a woman’s romantic relationship is threatened by another woman. For example, if another woman begins to flirt with one’s romantic partner, this should trigger women to seek and display luxury goods. We therefore predicted that women’s desire for conspicuous luxury products should be triggered by merely activating a motive to guard a mate (Griskevicius and Kenrick 2013). Formally: H2: Activating a mate guarding motive should trigger women’s desire for conspicuous luxury goods. Is the Signal Distinct and Directed to the Intended Receiver? If women use products as signals to deter romantic rivals, should all products be equally effective? According to our model, the most effective signals for mate guarding should be conspicuous luxury possessions—products that are both expensive and publicly visible. For example, a woman’s opulent washing machine or luxurious alarm clock has limited signaling value when another woman is flirting with her romantic partner across town. Because only publicly conspicuous luxury possessions can be easily seen by others, it is precisely these kinds of possessions that should be most effective as signals to romantic rivals. This suggests that a mate guarding motive should not lead women to simply desire more expensive products in general but should instead lead them to specifically desire conspicuous luxury possessions. Formally: H3: A motive to guard a mate should lead women to seek publicly conspicuous luxury products but not less conspicuous products that are generally used in private. Finally, if women use luxury products as signals to other women who are potential mate poachers, this suggests that women’s desire for luxury products should depend on the 837 audience who can see those products. In situations when it is not possible for the intended audience to observe the signal, a mate guarding motive should be unlikely to trigger women’s desire for flaunting luxury goods. Instead, a mate guarding motive should trigger women’s desire for conspicuous luxury products when the situation allows for the products to be seen by potential mate poachers. Formally: H4: A mate guarding motive should lead women to seek conspicuous luxury products when the products can be seen by other women who pose a threat to the relationship. THE CURRENT RESEARCH Five experiments tested the idea that women’s flaunting of luxury products functions as a signaling system to other women in the service of mate guarding. Study 1 examined whether receivers accurately decipher the signal, testing whether other women perceive a woman with luxurious possessions as having a more devoted partner (hypothesis 1). Study 2 investigated the triggers for women’s desire for expensive goods, testing whether activating a mate guarding motive triggers women’s desire for conspicuous luxury products (hypothesis 2). Study 3 examined the specificity of the signal, testing whether activating a mate guarding motive leads women ... Purchase answer to see full attachment