Identity Threats, Compensatory Consumption, and Working Memory Capacity: How Feeling Threatened Leads to Heightened Evaluations of Identity-Relevant Products

Despite abundant work documenting consumers’ reliance on symbolic selfcompletion after experiencing a self-discrepancy, surprisingly little research has investigated the underlying psychological processes that drive this type of compensatory consumption. This article addresses this critical gap, demonstrating that selfdiscrepancies triggered by identity threats reduce working memory capacity (WMC), and these reductions inWMC mediate compensatory consumption. Consumers process identity-relevant products more positively than neutral products, establishing a causal chain between self-threats, WMC, and compensatory consumption. In addition, identity-consistent experiences facilitate increases in WMC. Importantly, by utilizing negative emotions as the source of self-threat, this article also demonstrates that identity-inconsistent emotions can serve as a source of threat that is not only impactful, but also easily manipulated by managers through advertisements.