Post Christmas sales: Why retail rioting is a classic symptom of 'affluenza'

Psychologist Oliver James tells Ellie O’Byrne why shoppers beating each other to a pulp over a cut-price flatscreen is a classic symptom of ’affluenza’

THE video footage appears to show a catastrophe. A bomb scare, perhaps, or a fire? But watch a second longer; the screaming throng is rushing into the building, not out of it. As the first wave thunders through the foyer, people are knocked to the ground. In their frantic scramble for a bargain, other shoppers — for that’s who these people are — trample straight over the fallen. This is Black Friday in the US, the sales bonanza the day after Thanksgiving. It is a frenzy of materialistic madness.

In 2014, the Black Friday phenomenon was foisted upon the Irish public, with mercifully no reports of the violence that occurred in the UK and US. But worldwide, increasingly common footage of people scuffling over flat-screen TVs and reports of police being called to stores have given rise to a new term — ‘retail rioting’.

Retailers seem to want us to riot: not content with ‘Black Friday’, in November, they invented the term ‘Panic Saturday’ for last Saturday, the supposedly last major shopping day before Christmas. And it seems they are incapable of waiting until St Stephen’s Day for end-of-year sales, as chains like Marks and Spencer knocked 30% off in the run-up to Christmas.

In years gone by, the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, people wanted a breather, to be with friends and family, to eat, and take stock; they wanted to sum up the year that was and write a few resolutions for the year to come.

But now less than 48 hours after exhausted shop managers close the shutters on Christmas Eve, tens of thousands of shoppers rejoin the queues to squabble over discounted goods. Why the consumerist frenzy?

UK psychologist, broadcaster and author, Oliver James, says these shoppers are displaying all the symptoms of ‘affluenza’. A “socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more,” the phenomenon has been described by many authors, from economists to environmentalists. In his 2007 book, Affluenza, James catalogued the psychological distress of the condition.

James says that the pressure of living in a consumerist society rife with inequality, in which needs and wants are confused, is the cause.

“People begin to believe that it’s almost a matter of life and death to have that flat-screen TV,” he said. “They’re very needy, like addicts. Fights break out in the same way that they do between people who are trying to get a hold of drugs. In fact, the biochemistry is shown to be identical; there’s essentially no difference between a shopping addict and a drug addict, in terms of biology.”

But could the sales frenzy be attributed to a hunter-gatherer instinct, a human satisfaction in competing for, and acquiring, material goods? No; evolutionary psychology, he says, is, for the most part, “utter bilge”. The blame, he says, lies with the affluent, “selfish capitalist”, English-speaking world.

“Why are they fighting for the flatscreen telly? It’s because it’s taken on an importance in their life which is vastly greater than it should be. They are confusing real needs with wants and they’re beginning to believe that their existence, their pleasure in life, their identity, their status, is conferred on them by the possession of this object,” he says.

James’s words seem plausible when you view footage of a bewildered-looking English woman being interviewed outside a large electrical goods store, after her Black Friday spree. When asked if she needed the TV that was in her shopping trolley, she shrugged, a little embarrassed: “Not really, I just grabbed it to say I got something in my trolley.”

This inability to tell the difference between a want and a need is accelerated by advertising, or the “stimulation of artificial needs,” as James says “There is twice as much spent, per capita, in the UK, on advertising as compared to mainland Europe, and four times as much per capita in the US. We live in a marketing society, where advertisements are bled into our lives all the time. That does have a drip-drip effect.”

WHO studies show that English-speaking nations suffer nearly twice as much emotional distress as mainland Europe and Japan; 21.6% vs 11.5%, mirroring the figures on advertising spending to an uncanny degree.

Linking a product with our well-being, social status and attractiveness to members of the opposite sex has been the soft-sell strategy since the 1930s and the advent of psychologically sophisticated advertising techniques. The message that a product has personal benefits also, of course, implies the opposite; if you don’t have it, you don’t measure up.

Alain de Botton wrote about the psychology of satisfaction in his 2004 book, Status Anxiety. He said too much consumer choice, combined with over-identification with our purchases, causes anxiety and low self-esteem; with shelves and shelves of indistinguishable products available to us, how can we be sure that we’ve purchased the best possible brand or variant, and, if we haven’t, will this reflect on our social standing?

If we want something so badly that we push a pregnant woman to the floor to get it, as happened in a Black Friday scramble in a Michigan Walmart a few years ago, then it’s time to step back and take stock of our attitudes.

And surely a constant, never-ending supply of consumer goods is an ecological nightmare?

A study published on December 10 revealed that the Earth’s oceans now contain 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic, which weigh over 250,000 tonnes. It is crucial that we stop and ask ourselves why we are buying.

A developmental psychologist, James says parenting is crucial in providing a ‘vaccine’ against affluenza for future generations. By being affectionate with our children, instead of showering them with material possessions, James says, we can break the link between consumer goods and self-esteem.

Material goods will not satisfy your child’s emotional needs. Christmas and birthdays are a good time to teach this lesson. Ask relatives to club together and buy one present for your child, and make it clear next year that Santa brings one or two gifts.

But won’t children feel left out if all their friends are talking about what they got for Christmas? James says the hardline is easier for children to accept than we give them credit for. “Show them, ‘well, look at Stacy over there, she may have an iPhone, but how happy is she’?” he said. “Tell them the truth! Say, ‘the reason she’s been given it is because her mother doesn’t have the time or capacity to give her love.’ Explain how it works.

“Children are capable of understanding. This is a systemic thing. It starts with the values that parents transmit to their children,” he says.