Research Summary
Research Summary
Overview
Description
Grant uses a combination of laboratory and field experiments to harness consumers' cognitive and affective resources to increase their well-being. Consumers make countless daily decisions in the pursuit of happiness -- whether and how to spend or save their money, what and how much to eat, and when and how to help others. As such, Grant designs interventions that both influence consumers' behavior and identify the underlying cognitive and affective mechanisms that drive the success-- and failure-- of such efforts. Within in this arena he has developed three research streams.
Financial Well-Being
Grant examines how consumers' financial decisions are linked to their psychological health and happiness and has also developed interventions to help consumers improve their financial health. For example, a large body of cross-sectional survey research demonstrates that overall life satisfaction rises with income, though typically with diminishing marginal return. One limitation of our current understanding of the relationship between happiness and wealth, however, is that the vast majority of data informing our understanding of this relationship is derived from samples comprised of average earners and the poor. In one working paper, Grant uses data from two large samples of millionaires (N = 4,155) and finds that only at high levels of wealth are millionaires happier than millionaires with lower levels of wealth. Grant also evaluates how the source of wealth influences happiness and find that millionaires are significantly less happy if they inherited their
wealth compared to individuals who earned it. These results augment previous models of the moneyhappiness link and suggest that greater wealth can predict greater happiness—especially if this wealth is earned.
In another paper, Grant manipulates how credit card payments are made: consumers are able to allocate a payment toward specific purchases on a credit card bill—literally by clicking on that coffee at Starbucks or evening at the theater to remove it from their list of purchases—or, as is more typical, they can simply indicate the total amount of money they would like to pay. In one study even, consumers get the satisfaction of seeing their purchase explode when they click it to pay it off. Across a series of studies, consumers allocate significantly more toward their debt when allocating a payment toward a specific purchase. Making a payment for a
specific item increases awareness of the items purchased and increases the perceived impact of reducing the debt—which in turn leads to greater repayment.
Physical Well-Being
In this stream of research, Grant examines health policies aimed at reducing the purchase and consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages. Specifically, he examines the underlying psychological responses to proposed policies to better understand the circumstances in which these policies might successd and when they might backfire.
For instance, in one paper, Grant investigates the effectiveness of warning labels in reducing the purchasing of sugar-sweetened beverages by conducting a large-scale field experiment at a hospital cafeteria evaluating real beverage purchases (N = 36,638) to understand the effectiveness of three
different labels for sugary drinks: (a) calories, (b) a text warning, and (c) a text warning with graphic images. Relative to no label, calorie and text warning labels do not significantly decrease the purchasing of sugary drinks. However, a graphic warning label reduces the share of sugary drinks purchased by 15.5%—an effect
driven by the substitution of water for sugary drinks. Importantly, graphic warning labels do not decrease overall beverage purchases, but do facilitate healthier choices.
Social Well-Being
Grant examines how consumers' decisions to give their resources (money, time and unwanted objects) to others influences their happiness and how consumer can best communicate their constrained resources to their close relationship partners.
In one paper, Grant explores the potential for social recycling-- disposing of used goods by allowing other consumers to acquire them at no cost—to transform unused physical resources into increased consumer happiness. One field experiment and five studies (N = 1,475) demonstrate that relative to other forms of
disposal (trashing, recycling), social recycling increases positive affect and is perceived as more beneficial to the environment and others. In turn, social recycling increases the disposal of unwanted goods, while also decreasing landfill. This finding suggests that social recycling may be a scalable intervention that addresses
both a key environmental issue and a common consumer struggle: how to make the painful process of letting go of goods into a source of pleasure.