Department of Marketing.
Anderson School of Management.
J Exp Psychol Appl. 2021 Mar;27(1):57-68. doi: 10.1037/xap0000276. Epub 2020 May 21.
Life's major purchases, such as buying a home or going to college, often involve taking on considerable debt. What are the downstream emotional consequences? Does carrying debt influence consumers' general sense of satisfaction in life? Seven studies examine the relationship between consumers' debt holdings and life satisfaction, showing that the effect depends on the type of debt. Though mortgages tend to comprise consumers' largest debts, and though credit card balances tend to have the highest interest rates, we found among a diverse sample of American adults ( = 5,808) that the type of debt most strongly associated with lower levels of life satisfaction is student loans. We further found that the extent to which consumers mentally label a given debt type as "debt" drives the emotional consequences of those debt holdings, and compared to the other debt types, student loans are perceived more as "debt." Together the findings suggest that carrying debt can spill over to undermine people's overall subjective well-being, especially when their debt is perceived as such. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
人生中的重大购买行为，如购房或上大学，往往涉及承担相当大的债务。那么，这些债务会带来哪些下游情绪后果呢？债务是否会影响消费者对生活总体满意度？七项研究考察了消费者的债务持有量与生活满意度之间的关系，结果表明，这种影响取决于债务的类型。尽管抵押贷款往往构成消费者最大的债务，而信用卡余额往往具有最高的利率，但我们在一个多样化的美国成年人样本中发现（n=5808），与较低水平的生活满意度最相关的债务类型是学生贷款。我们进一步发现，消费者在心理上将某种债务类型标记为“债务”的程度，会影响这些债务持有带来的情绪后果，与其他债务类型相比，学生贷款被更多地视为“债务”。这些发现表明，持有债务可能会蔓延到破坏人们的整体主观幸福感，尤其是当他们的债务被视为“债务”时。
