Misrepresentation in the Consumer Context

Research in social psychology suggests that motives such as self-bolstering and impression management can lead people to engage in deliberate misrepresentationsduring interpersonal communications.This articleextends our understandingof such behaviorto a new domain; that of consumer communications. Drawing on research on lying behavior and symbolic consumption,we suggest that misrepresentationabout products and possessionsis particularly likely to occur when these productsor possessionsare used to create a positiveself-imagein the contextof social interaction.Experiments 1 and 2 simulatea social interactionwherein misrepresentation about the purchase price of a product helps participants to manage impressions. A third experiment extends these findings by testing for wealth-related misrepresentation in the context of an interaction wherein participantsactually communicate their family’s wealth to a recipient.Consistentwith predictionsderivedfrom existingresearchon symbolicconsumption, all 3 experimentsprovidesupport for the criticalimportanceof recipientstatus on the likelihood of misrepresentation.The first 2 experimentsadditionallyexamine the role of individualdifferences and brand differences.Results on these dimensionsare also supportiveof our underlying theoretical premise regarding the antecedents of lying behavior.