The effects of authentic and hubristic pride on indulgence

Purpose Pride is an emotional response to success or achievement with two facets, AP and HP. This study aims to address an unanswered question: how does each type of pride affect indulgence when consumers engage in relatively thoughtful processing (System II) versus when they engage in rapid and more superficial processing (System I). Design/methodology/approach Using four experiments, this research investigates the effects of pride and cognitive resources on indulgence. This study also tests the mediating roles of deservedness and self-esteem using an ANOVA, a bootstrap analysis and a binary logistic-regression analysis. Findings The results show that cognitive resources moderate the effects of AP and HP on indulgence. When consumers have ample cognitive resources, AP leads to more indulgence than HP. When consumers have restricted cognitive resources and engage a quick, affective-based processing system, HP leads to greater indulgence than AP. Research limitations/implications This research enhances understanding of the impact of two kinds of pride on indulgence and advances the authors’ understanding in the broader area linking emotion and consumer decision-making. Practical implications Marketers and public policymakers need to understand the differences between AP and HP because they have potentially different impacts on consumer behavior. Depending on whether companies are trying to motivate consumers to indulge or to restrain from indulging, companies can successfully incorporate AP or HP into their marketing communications. Originality/value The key contribution of this research is that the authors show that both AP and HP can lead to indulgence, depending on the amount of cognitive attention that is allocated to the decision and, therefore, which system consumers deploy.