{"title":"From kurtas to crop tops: A theory of postliminal self-transformation","authors":"Tanuka Ghoshal, Russell W. Belk","doi":"10.1002/jcpy.70006","DOIUrl":"10.1002/jcpy.70006","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This research theorizes <i>postliminal self-transformation</i>, the process by which consumers adapt to new status positions following major life transitions. Prior consumer research emphasizes liminality—the “betwixt and between” ambiguous phase— but overlooks what happens after liminality as individuals attempt to fit in. Drawing on qualitative data regarding young Indian women migrants to metropolitan corporate contexts, we reveal that transformation does not end with liminality but unfolds through a reflexive and effortful postliminal process. Women strategically use consumption—particularly of clothing and accessories—to bridge self-discrepancies, mitigate exclusion, and gradually internalize their new professional identities. This stagewise progression moves from observation and mimicry to embodied transformation and identity mastery, often under constraints of patriarchy, class, and gender expectations. Contrasting with traditional (Western) models of adulthood that emphasize settling down, the women's postliminal adaptation is emancipatory and nonlinear, updating scripts for marking adulthood. By theorizing this postliminal adaptation, we challenge assumptions of instantaneous reincorporation, extending understanding of identity work. Our framework advances consumer psychology by showing how consumption facilitates ongoing self-reconstruction in dynamic and inequitable social hierarchies.</p>","PeriodicalId":48365,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Psychology","volume":"36 2","pages":"199-221"},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147707940","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mina Kwon, Katina Kulow, Michael J. Barone, Joseph Neary
{"title":"All for one or one for all? How power states affect consumer giving across charities","authors":"Mina Kwon, Katina Kulow, Michael J. Barone, Joseph Neary","doi":"10.1002/jcpy.70005","DOIUrl":"10.1002/jcpy.70005","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Though ample research on consumer giving exists, it has typically focused on factors affecting donation depth, or how much a consumer donates <i>to one charity</i>. Much less research has focused on factors affecting donation breadth, or how a consumer distributes donations <i>across multiple charities</i>. To address this void, the current research offers eight studies examining how donation breadth may be affected by the level of power consumers experience. A core finding is that low- (vs. high-) power states lead to greater donation breadth. This effect arises through a novel mechanism by which low- (vs. high-) power states promote more refined categorizations that help consumers discern cross-charity differences to increase donation breadth. Convergent evidence of this categorization-based mechanism is provided by causal chain, measurement-based, and moderation approaches. The impact of this research on the prosocial behavior and consumer power literature is discussed, as are implications for organizations seeking to strategically manage consumer giving in the context of multiple charities.</p>","PeriodicalId":48365,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Psychology","volume":"36 2","pages":"222-236"},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147708268","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Impatience for negative experiences","authors":"David J. Hardisty","doi":"10.1002/jcpy.70017","DOIUrl":"10.1002/jcpy.70017","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Conceptualizing impatience as an emotion, and patience as the regulation of that emotion, offers new insights and opportunities for the study of consumer behavior. While this framework has primarily been applied to impatience for positive events, many real-life events of interest involve decisions about negative or mixed-valence events. In this commentary, I explore how impatience and patience play out in these situations, explaining a set of previously disconnected “anomalies” in the literature on intertemporal choice, yielding fresh insights and applications in consumer psychology. Finally, I explore when and how people may want to cultivate (rather than regulate) impatience for gains and losses.</p>","PeriodicalId":48365,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Psychology","volume":"36 2","pages":"288-292"},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://myscp.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/jcpy.70017","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147708332","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The politics of impact: How political ideology shapes perceptions of the environmental impact of individual actions","authors":"Aylin Cakanlar, Katherine White, Remi Trudel","doi":"10.1002/jcpy.70020","DOIUrl":"10.1002/jcpy.70020","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Although consumers who engage in the same sustainable behaviors objectively have the same environmental impact, this research finds that people's perceptions of that impact are subjective and systematically shaped by political ideology. Seven studies demonstrate that conservatives tend to perceive their sustainable actions to have less of a positive impact on the environment than liberals do, which predicts conservatives' lower engagement in sustainable behaviors. This effect occurs not just because of their own climate change beliefs, but also because of the lower observed prevalence of sustainable behaviors in their in-group. Consistent with this mechanism, when (a) the behavior is presented in a domain where it is seen as more prevalent among conservatives' ingroup members (i.e., health vs. sustainability), (b) the message emphasizes the prevalence of sustainable actions within the ingroup, or (c) impact is explicitly communicated, conservatives' perceptions of impact and their willingness to engage in sustainable behaviors increase. This work contributes to the literature on political ideology, highlighting effective ways to promote sustainable behavior across the political spectrum.</p>","PeriodicalId":48365,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Psychology","volume":"36 2","pages":"161-180"},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://myscp.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/jcpy.70020","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147708160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stratified consumer activism: How socioeconomic status shapes boycott participation","authors":"Yan Vieites, Daniel Fernandes, Debora V. Thompson","doi":"10.1002/jcpy.70021","DOIUrl":"10.1002/jcpy.70021","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Consumer activism is becoming increasingly common worldwide, but are all consumer groups as likely to engage in these practices? The current research investigates the presence of socioeconomic status (SES) differences in boycotting participation and explores the psychological processes underlying potential discrepancies. Results from four studies, including cross-national surveys, experiments, and lab-in-the-field evidence, show that low-SES consumers display a lower likelihood of boycotting companies than their high-SES peers. The phenomenon emerges across different measures, including self-reported intentions, past actions, and actual behaviors. This reduced inclination to boycott among the socioeconomically disadvantaged is driven by their reduced sense of control, which induces lower beliefs that consumption can be used as an effective instrument to enact change. These findings offer important contributions to the study of boycotting practices and shed new light on the complex relationship between socioeconomic conditions and consumer behavior.</p>","PeriodicalId":48365,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Psychology","volume":"36 2","pages":"261-269"},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://myscp.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/jcpy.70021","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147708246","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"To wait, or not to wait: The paradoxical effects of time metaphors on impatience","authors":"Ankur Kapoor, Angela Y. Lee","doi":"10.1002/jcpy.70007","DOIUrl":"10.1002/jcpy.70007","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This research explores the paradoxical effects of two different root metaphors of time—as resource and as motion—on impatience. We first show a conceptual correspondence between the two root metaphors: experiences associated with little time are often perceived as similar to those associated with time passing quickly, and experiences associated with ample time are often perceived as similar to those associated with time passing slowly. However, people's impatience exhibits opposite patterns for the corresponding metaphors: while people are less willing to wait when they have little versus ample time, they are more willing to wait when they experience time passing quickly versus slowly. This paradoxical effect arises because corresponding metaphors have opposite effects on perceived control and anticipated valence of the waiting time, which in turn lead to variations in impatience. Four studies (plus two in the Appendices S4 and S5) conducted across online, lab, and field settings support these findings. By identifying the relationship between the root metaphors of time-as-motion and time-as-resource and their paradoxical effects on impatience, this research contributes to the literatures on temporal cognition and intertemporal choice, and to the broader literature on the role of metaphors in consumer decision-making.</p>","PeriodicalId":48365,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Psychology","volume":"36 1","pages":"94-103"},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2026-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145986988","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}