Hallo Everybody,
Do you know of any (psychological) theory that basically claims:
If I have something or receive something, I might consider it less valuable if I find out that other people have or received this as well? Or put another way: Something gets an extra value because I think nobody else has it, so it is something special.
Seem reasonable for me but I am looking for a label to put on it.
Cheers,
Arne
Hi, Arne! Your question appears to be an interesting one to me, especially if you look at it in terms of an individual's need for uniqueness (NFU). Need for uniqueness is defined as "consumers’ trait of pursuing differentness relative to others through the acquisition, utilization, and disposition of consumer goods for the purpose of developing and enhancing one’s self-image and social image" (Tian, Bearden, & Hunter, 2001, p. 52). According to Tian et al., one of the dimensions of NFU is avoidance of similarity, which is very close to what you are asking. The authors posit that higher one’s NFU, more will be the need to have something that is not used by others or exclusivity. I think you can also relate this tendency with the trait of materialism (Chan, To, & Chu, 2015). In fact, Chan et al.’s paper explores a similar idea. I hope this helps! Best of luck with your work!
Works cited:
Chan, W. Y., To, C. K. M., & Chu, W. C. (2015). Materialistic consumers who seek unique products: How does their need for status and their affective response facilitate the repurchase intention of luxury goods? Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 27(November), 1–10.
Tian, K. T., Bearden, W. O., & Hunter, G. L. (2001). Consumers’ need for uniqueness: Scale development and validation. Journal of Consumer Research, 28(1), 50–66.
Hi Diptiman, thank you for your very interesting answer. Your line of thoughts makes a lot of sense to me. NFU would be probably a moderating variable to this effect.
I still wonder if there is a general tendency or bias toward the effect I described earlier.
The concept of scarcity in social psychology is essentially the same as scarcity in economics. If something is considered scarce, it is considered more valuable. It is called the scarcity bias or scarcity heuristic.
Mittone, L., & Savadori, L. (2009). The scarcity bias. Applied Psychology, 58(3), 453-468.
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