Some kinds of purchases provoke anxiety. Many men hate to shop for clothes. In general, men do not keep up on the latest
fashions and don’t really have a sense of what will look good. Even men who do know about fashion may be
concerned about buying clothes, just because they know there is a stereotype
out there that men are fashion-challenged.
Similarly, there is a stereotype that women don’t know much about cars. As a result, women often experience a similar
kind of anxiety when car shopping.
A paper in the August, 2011 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research by Kyoungmi
Lee, Hakkyun Kim, and Kathleen Vohs explored this kind of stereotype-induced
anxiety.
Their studies focused on women. They reasoned that women might often feel
anxiety when faced with choices involving science and math because of the
widespread (if false) stereotype that women are worse at science and math than
men. They suggested that in cases in
which women had to make choices of products involving math or science, they
might minimize their anxiety by trying to work with a female salesperson. Working with a female salesperson would
minimize the importance of gender in the interaction and thus would reduce the
overall anxiety.
To test this possibility, one study asked men and women to
choose whether they would want to do business with a financial planning
company. Everyone saw an ad for a
company. Some people saw an ad with
mathematical formulas in it, while others saw an ad with no formulas. The formulas were expected to increase the
importance of math for the decision, which was expected to increase anxiety
about the choice for the women in the study.
Finally, the financial advisors depicted in the ad were either men or
women.
Men in this study were equally likely to be interested in
doing business with this company regardless of whether there was math in the ad
or whether men or women were shown as financial advisors. The women did not care about the gender of
the advisors when there was no math in the ad, but were much more likely to
want to do business with females than with males when there was math in the
ad. The women also expressed more
anxiety when shown the ad with the math in it than when shown the ad with no
math.
If it really is anxiety that is affecting women’s decisions,
then it ought to be possible to get rid of women’s preferences for a female
salesperson by reducing their anxiety in some way. In another study, women participants were asked
to imagine that they were visiting a car dealer. In the scenario, they were greeted either by
a male or female salesperson. They were
asked to rate how likely they would be to buy from that car dealer. Consistent with the previous study, women who
just read this scenario indicated that they were more likely to purchase from
this dealer if they had a female salesperson than if they had a male
salesperson.
As a clever way of trying to decrease anxiety, half of the
participants were presented with these scenarios in a packet of papers that had
been covered in a vanilla scent. Previous
research suggests that the scent of vanilla is effective at helping to reduce
anxiety. The women who read the
scenarios while smelling vanilla liked the car dealers equally well regardless
of whether they had a male or female salesperson.
When shopping gets stressful, it is clear that you will try
to find a way to make it less stressful. It is important to be mindful of what
kinds of shopping situations are stressful for you, though, because the ways
that you reduce stress may not be the ones that allow you to make the best
choices. Often, you might be tempted to
make stressful choices as quickly as possible, even though spending a bit more
time might allow you to make a better choice.
In those cases, a pleasant scent or some deep breaths might help to
reduce the anxiety that goes with some choices.