Canadian Atheists are No Less Healthy than the Religious

Throw BABE Out With the Bathwater? Canadian Atheists are No Less Healthy than the Religious. David Speed. Journal of Religion and Health volume 61, pages 4608–4634. Apr 18 2022. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10943-022-01558-w

Abstract: The belief-as-benefit effect (BABE) is a broad term for the positive association between religion/spirituality (R/S) and health outcomes. Functionally, religious variables and religious identities predict greater wellness, which implies that atheists should report worse health relative to religious groups. Using Cycle 29 of the cross-sectional General Social Survey from Statistics Canada (N > 15,900), I explored health differences in stress, life satisfaction, subjective physical wellbeing, and subjective mental wellbeing across R/S identities (atheists, agnostics, Nones, Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Religions). Results indicated that (1). religious attendance, prayer, and religiosity were generally unrelated to all health outcomes for all R/S identities, (2). averagely religious atheists reported health parity with averagely religious members of all other R/S identities, and (3). when comparing a maximally nonreligious atheist group against several maximally religiously affiliated groups, atheists largely showed health parity. If both low R/S and high R/S are associated with comparable wellness, researchers should actively question whether R/S is genuinely salutary.

Rolf Degen summarizing... The earliest memories of our childhood mostly consist of innocuous, disjointed scraps of experience, often devoid of emotion and without a coherent narrative

Early Childhood Memories Are not Repressed: Either They Were Never Formed or Were Quickly Forgotten. Mark L. Howe. Topics in Cognitive Science, December 2 2022. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12636

Abstract: Early childhood events are rarely remembered in adulthood. In fact, memory for these early experiences declines during childhood itself. This holds regardless of whether these memories of autobiographical experiences are traumatic or mundane, everyday experiences. Indeed, what people tend to remember from their childhoods involves relatively innocuous experiences, ones often devoid of emotion. In this article, I provide an overview of the types of memories adults recall from their childhoods and the ages at which these memories are believed to have been formed. Along the way, I provide a brief exegesis of the neurobiological and cognitive underpinnings of early memory development. I will show that changes and growth in neural interconnectivity as well as the development of various cognitive structures (e.g., the inception of the cognitive self) help propel the emergence of a mature autobiographical memory system, one that can and does serve as a reconstructive base for remembering events that occur in later childhood and adulthood. During the course of this review, I detail the nature of early memories, their fragility, and the adaptive consequences of forgetting and supplanting these memories with newer, more age-appropriate experiences throughout childhood.

3 Forgetting as adaptive

The idea that forgetting is an adaptive process has gained considerable currency recently (e.g., see Nørby, 2015; Ryan & Frankland, 2022). A central tenet here is that “… information loss prevents overfitting to perceptual situations that are too specific. In other words, degrading stored information contained in a memory allows organisms to behave more flexibly and promotes better memory-guided decision-making” (Ryan & Frankland, 2022, p. 179). Forgetting then, in childhood and adulthood, is something that occurs in an adaptive memory system, one that is geared to promote the survival of the remembering organism (also see Howe & Otgaar, 2013).

A related mechanism that, although not necessarily leading to the complete erasure of information but simply its modification, is reconsolidation. Like consolidation, reconsolidation involves initial trace volatility of engrams in memory followed by the stabilizing of the engram, in this case, following the retrieval of a previously stored memory trace. During the period of instability, additional information can be added to the original memory trace, information that subsequently becomes part of the newly restored engram. Through this process, the original trace is updated with new information, making that representation more pertinent to functioning in the organisms current environment.

Concerning the forgetting of early childhood experiences, one model suggests that the ongoing maturation of the hippocampal complex may make infantile memories inaccessible to later retrieval attempts (Alberini & Travaglia, 2017). The idea here is that there are critical periods in memory-related neural development in which the young organism is learning to learn and remember. Although memory traces may be laid down early in this development, forgetting of these traces might occur due to the maturation of the hippocampal memory system in response to these infantile experiences, making memories of these early experiences inaccessible to retrieval attempts in this more mature memory system.

Another process that exacerbates forgetting is hippocampal neurogenesis (e.g., see Akers et al., 2014). In infancy as well as adulthood, new neurons are generated in the hippocampus (specifically, the subgranular zone of the dentate gyrus), neurons that integrate into hippocampal circuits permitting new learning. This integration not only aids in the storage of new memories, but can also affect memories that are already stored. That is, as these new neurons integrate into the hippocampus, they establish new synaptic connections that either compliment those that already exist or may even replace those existing ones. Thus, high levels of hippocampal neurogenesis can lead to higher levels of forgetting of information already stored in memory. Because hippocampal neurogenesis rates tend to be high during infancy (see Akers et al., 2014), rates of forgetting should be high then too. The fact that these high rates of neurogenesis are seen across many species during infancy, and these same species evince high rates of infantile amnesia, neurogenesis may be partly responsible for increased forgetting of early life events (Akers et al., 2014; Josselyn & Frankland, 2012; also see Howe, 2011). Importantly, because neurogenesis reconfigures hippocampal circuits, memories originally served by these circuits have been fundamentally altered and cannot be reinstated as they no longer exist in their original form (Akers et al., 2014). As development proceeds, neurogenesis rates decline, making it easier (neurobiologically, at least) to retain hippocampally dependent (declarative/autobiographical) memories over longer and longer periods of retention. Thus, given the need to update early memories in light of new experiences, as well as the prodigious rates of neurogenesis early in life, both of these factors contribute to the increased forgetting, not repression, of early childhood experiences.

Casadastraphobia, the fear of "falling up" into the sky

Letter to the Editor: A previously undescribed specific phobia. Alan Price, David Moore, Raja Mukherjee, Kayleigh Seen. Journal of Psychiatric Research, Volume 157, January 2023, Page 17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2022.11.001

[No abstract] [From https://phobia.fandom.com/wiki/Casadastraphobia - Casadastraphobia is the fear of falling into the sky. It is a relatively recently identified fear, having first appeared on urbandictionary.com on December 11th, 2006, having not previously been recorded or coined anywhere else. It is defined as an irrational or pathological fear of falling into the sky. "Cas-" is a Latin morpheme meaning "to fall," while "ad" is a Latin preposition meaning "to" or "toward." And most people recognize "-astra-" as the Latin morpheme for "star," and "phobia" as a greek word meaning "fear of." Thus, Casadastraphobia is "a fear of falling toward the stars," which is interpreted in this sense to mean, more broadly, a fear of falling toward the sky. But "-astra-" is not a etymological mistake, as many people report that their casadastraphobia is worse while they are viewing a night sky. Casasdastraphobia is, by its nature, a fantasy phobia, or a phobia for which the probability of the event described in the fear happening is zero, or near zero. This means that there is some amount of fantastical thinking involved in the precipitation of this phobia, which points to possible psychosis, as might be observed in schizotypal or schizophrenic thinking (or in bipolar disorder with psychotic features). Obsessive rumination is not beyond the realm of these disorders, and the two symptoms together can result in potentially traumatic experiences. There also seems to be some comorbidity between this phobia and vertigo, suggesting that vertigo might provoke the thinking which then becomes obsessively ruminated on, and thereby traumatizing. This is by its nature speculative, and not empirical, however, as casadastraphobia is a rather novel description of irrational fear, and has not yet made its way into broader medical discourse. ]

As it happens to us, attentional bias towards threat is diminished in aged monkeys

Santistevan, Anthony, Olivia Fiske, Gilda Moadab, Derek Isaacowitz, and Eliza Bliss-Moreau. 2022. “See No Evil: Attentional Bias Towards Threat Is Diminished in Aged Monkeys.” PsyArXiv. November 30. doi:10.31234/osf.io/2zth7

Abstract: Prior evidence demonstrates that relative to younger adults, older human adults exhibit attentional biases towards positive and/or away from negative socioaffective stimuli (i.e., the age-related positivity effect). Whether or not the effect is phylogenetically conserved is currently unknown and its biopsychosocial origins are debated. To address this gap, we evaluated how visual processing of socioaffective stimuli differs in aged, compared to middle-aged, rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) using eye-tracking in two experimental designs that are directly comparable to those historically used for evaluating attentional biases in humans. Results of our study demonstrate that while younger rhesus possess robust attentional biases towards threatening pictures of conspecifics faces, aged animals evidence no such bias. Critically, these biases emerged only when threatening faces were paired with neutral and not ostensibly ‘positive’ faces, suggesting social context modifies the effect. Results of our study suggest evolutionarily shared mechanisms drive age-related decline in visual biases towards negative stimuli in aging across primate species.

As it happens to us, attentional bias towards threat is diminished in aged monkeys

Rolf Degen summarizing... Arriving fashionably late to social gatherings acts as a costly status symbol, that makes people appear more appealing and worthy of imitation in the eyes of others

Fashionably late: Differentially costly signaling of sociometric status through a subtle act of being late. Kivilcim Dogerlioglu-Demir, Andy H. Ng, Cenk Koçaş. Journal of Business Research, Volume 155, Part A, January 2023, 113331. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.113331

Abstract 

This research examines how arriving late to social gatherings operates as a signal of social connectedness and desirability, leading to elevated sociometric status attributions.

Drawing on costly signaling theory and the premises of sociometric status and consumption mimicry, we argue that tardiness to a gathering, as a costly and visible signal, can lead to positive inferences of sociometric status, thereby leading to mimicry. We define fashionably late as a separating equilibrium tardiness based on a signaling game and demonstrate through a series of experimental studies that people infer higher status to late- rather than on-time-arriving people. Consequently, they strive to be in the same social network with such individuals, favor their product choices, and imitate their consumption behaviors. This research contributes to the literature on the conspicuous consumption of time and to research on costly signaling by revealing the powerful influence of signaling (through late arrival to a social event) on perceptions of sociometric status.

Happy people spend less on consumption

The Effect of Consumer Confidence and Subjective Well-being on Consumers’ Spending Behavior. Lenka Mynaříková & Vít Pošta. Journal of Happiness Studies, Nov 29 2022. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-022-00603-5

Abstract: The paper focuses on the role of consumer confidence and selected well-being measures in aggregate consumption and in subsets of aggregate consumption on a broad set of 22 OECD countries. Consumer confidence played a positive and statistically significant role in the development of expenditures especially on durable and semi-durable goods and services. The increase in cognitive, affective and eudaimonic measures of well-being, measured by the Cantril ladder, positive and negative affect and freedom to make life choices variables, had negative impact on total consumption and expenditures on semi-durable goods and services. Possible explanations for these estimates are provided in the paper. Based on the purpose of expenditure, consumer confidence was a significant determinant of all expenditures except for unavoidable spending such as food, health, housing, water, energy, and fuel. The subjective well-being indicators showed a negative impact on expenditures on clothing and footwear, recreation and culture, and restaurants and hotels. Possible explanations for the positive and negative effects of subjective well-being measures on consumption, benefits of including the freedom of choice variable, and directions for future research regarding the introduction of understudied variables are discussed.

Subjective Well-being, Emotions, and Consumers´ Consumption Expenditure

Economic research has confirmed the importance of studying consumers' feelings and emotions when predicting consumer behavior (Ahmad & Rangaraju, 2017; Johnson & Naka, 2014; Nyman & Ormerod, 2014). Regarding the relationship between consumption and SWB or its components, studies (Bertram-Hümmer & Baliki, 2015; Dumludag, 2015; Gokdemir, 2015; Guillen-Royo, 2008; Noll & Weick, 2015; Zhang & Xiong, 2015) focus mainly on levels of consumption. Specific findings depend on what a given study actually measures–e.g., some studies consider happiness a synonym for SWB, others draw a difference between these two. For instance, Schmutte and Ryff (1997) describe psychological well-being as a general feeling of happiness. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (2013) describes three main types of SWB measures: cognitive measures related to the evaluation of life experiences or life as a whole (e.g., life satisfaction, Cantril ladder); affective measures related to “emotional well-being” (positive and negative affects or affect balance at or during a certain point or period in time); and measures related to the concept of “eudaimonia,” which capture individual happiness or welfare (Deci & Ryan, 2008; Heintzelman, 2018; Huta & Waterman, 2014). Most studies regard life satisfaction as a cognitive self-evaluation of happiness (Diener, 1984; Veenhoven, 1994) or SWB (Andrews & Withey, 1976; Campbell, 1976; Michalos, 1980). Tsurumi et al. (2021) found that total consumption contributes primarily to cognitive and eudaimonic measures of SWB. Duesenberry’s (1949) theory of consumer behavior suggests that various types of consumption enhance happiness and therefore also SWB in at least three ways. Increased consumption of durable goods, food, or housing may enhance happiness by alleviating material hardship or making life easier, serving as a form of coping mechanism against increased stress (Cheng et al., 2016). Conspicuous consumption of visible goods such as expensive vehicles, holidays, clothes, cosmetics, or jewelry may enhance happiness by increasing social status (Chao & Shor, 1998; Dutt, 2006; Johanson-Stenman & Martinsson, 2006; Kaus, 2013; Perez-Truglia, 2013). Finally, spending on leisure or charitable activities may enhance happiness by positively affecting social relationships (Pugno, 2009).

Similar to the consumer confidence, the impact of SWB on consumer behavior may be more profound during exceptional situations that lead to more dramatic behavioral reactions and changes, as we see in cases of panic buying and other herd behavior phenomena during disease outbreaks, national disasters, wars, or terrorist attacks (Leach, 1994; Lins & Aquino, 2020). Terror management theory (Arndt et al., 2004; Kennett-Hensel et al., 2012) explains how exceptional events motivate compensatory behavior to alleviate negative emotions. The compensatory behavior can take the form of purchasing unnecessary products or products of daily need in extensive quantity to regain the sense of control, security, or comfort. The threatening situation can make these purchases look necessary for survival (Arafat et al., 2020; Chua et al., 2021; Dodgson, 2020; Fairfield et al., 2015; Hendrix & Brinkman, 2013). Studies (Bentall et al., 2021; Burroughs & Rindfleisch, 2002) show that fear, anxiety, depressive mood, or elevated stress levels can lead to an active response such as over-purchasing or impulse spending behavior. These responses serve as a self-protective mechanism to manage negative emotions and restore a positive sense of self (Sneath et al., 2009). However, Landau et al. (2011) point out that some individuals may react passively and decrease their spending.

According to cognitive behavioral theories, cognitive evaluations (i.e., appraisals) influence emotions, while, at the same time, emotions influence the cognitive evaluation, and this interaction leads to a behavioral response (Ellsworth, 2013; Moors et al., 2013). The consumer confidence may function as an appraisal tied to specific emotions. Studies (Hampson et al., 2020; Kursan Milaković, 2021; Ng & Russell-Bennett, 2015) show that psychological mechanisms through which the consumer confidence leads to changes in spending behavior have a cognitive and affective dimension, but the affective component has not been sufficiently explored, with few exceptions (e.g., Sekizawa et al., 2021; Van Giesen & Pieters, 2019). Sekizawa et al. (2021) found that the level of the CCI and its fluctuation in Japan are associated with anxiety and positive affects; therefore, when the consumer confidence is higher, people tend to be happier and less anxious. The affect-as-information model suggests that emotions provide information related to one’s current available tendencies and cognitions (Schwarz & Bohner, 1996); therefore, people use emotional information to make judgments that influence their attitudes and behavior (e.g., Gino & Shea, 2012; Gino et al., 2012; Higgins, 2006). Two types of current emotions affect our decisions. We experience integral emotions when we make decisions, but we happen to have incidental emotions, unrelated to the appraisal (Brooks & Schweitzer, 2011; Olekalns & Smith, 2009; Tsay & Bazerman, 2009). Anxiety aroused prior to a decision may lead to perceiving certain behavior as worse, while positive emotions may lead to overvaluing benefits, undervaluing losses, and being more open to risk-taking (e.g., Barry et al., 2004; Friedman et al., 2004; Steinel et al., 2008; Van Kleef et al., 2004). Our decisions are also affected by anticipated emotions that we expect to have post-decision and that influence our risk estimation, intentions, and expectations (see e.g., Bagozzi et al., 2016; Carrera et al., 2011; Kotabe et al., 2019; Riquelme & Alqallaf, 2020; Zampetakis et al., 2016). Dread (i.e., extent of perceived lack of control, feelings of dread, and perceived catastrophic potential) is one of the anticipated emotions with a significant effect on our decisions and behavior (Senik, 2008). Together with the uncertainty of the situation, they create two psychological dimensions of the “risk” (Peters & Slovic, 1996) that influence the cognitive evaluation of risk and determine behavior, as explained by the risk-as-feelings hypothesis (Loewenstein et al., 2001). Perceived risk and uncertainty can strengthen fear and anxiety (Mi et al., 2019; Zheng et al., 2019), which can result in higher pessimism, more pessimistic risk estimates, and make consumers more risk-averse (Kuhnen & Knutson, 2011; Miu et al., 2008; Patt & Weber, 2014; Peng et al., 2014; Smithson, 2008; Stanton et al., 2014). Therefore, uncertainty and perceived risk can increase saving behavior (Bande & Riveiro, 2013; Carroll et al., 2012; Ceritoglu, 2013; Chamon et al., 2013; Mastrogiacomo & Alessie, 2014; Mody et al., 2012). However, this precautionary motive to build up a financial reserve is not universally supported (Fossen & Rostam-Afschar, 2013).

Both the consumer confidence and SWB are closely related to expectations, which can be defined as the assumptions individuals uphold about their future (Augusto-Landa et al., 2011; Conversano et al., 2010; Diener et al., 2003; Eid & Diener, 2004; Mäkikangas & Kinnunen, 2003; Pleeging & Burger, 2020). Optimistic people are generally happier, more resilient to negative economic or political shocks, and have a greater SWB (Arampatzi et al., 2015, 2020; Ekici & Koydemir 2016; Frijter et al., 2012). Optimism represents a psychological capital that serves as a buffer against misfortune (Youssef & Luthans, 2007). This corresponds to the economical view of confidence related to predictability (Malovaná et al., 2021). As explained by Akerlof and Shiller (2010), high confidence can lead to increased optimism about the future, while low confidence leads to higher pessimism. Similarly, a high trait of optimism can lead to higher confidence and thus spending more/saving less, while a high trait of pessimism leads to lower confidence and thus spending less/saving more. A distinction between optimism and pessimism as stable personality traits and as states that are more changeable may be necessary. The self-regulatory model talks about “dispositional optimism “ as a global expectation that good things will be plentiful in the future and bad things sparse and is associated with less distress, more active coping, and lower engagement in avoidance or denial (Scheier et al., 2001). Buchanan and Seligman (1995) describe that pessimists explain away bad events with internal, stable, and global causes, while optimists focus on external, unstable, and specific causes. Both theories suggest that optimism and pessimism involve cognitive, emotional, and motivational components, and thus influence our judgments, decisions, and behaviors. Since optimists can be pessimistic under certain conditions and vice versa, optimism and pessimism probably have both a trait and a state component (Luthans & Youssef, 2007). Although traits are more related to overall well-being, states relate more to specific outcomes such as educational or work-related goals and success (Kluemper et al., 2009; Peterson, 2000). While the trait may be important in explaining consumers´ habits, the state may help explain changes in the consumer confidence. Katona (1968) hypothesized that spending would increase when people became optimistic, and precautionary savings would rise when they became pessimistic. Kahneman and Tversky (1982) describe the forecast error as a tendency to overestimate the likelihood of positive events, and underestimate the likelihood of negative events, which can be explained by psychological biases such as the law of small numbers (Rabin, 2002) or the hindsight bias (Shiller, 2003), which make situations seem more predictable and more probable. Shiller (2003) explains that people make forecasts in uncertain situations by looking for familiar patterns and assuming that future favorable patterns will resemble past ones. Finally, due to the illusion of control, people optimistically distort the reality, believing that their own situation will be consistently better than the general one, which makes them expect a personal success with a probability inappropriately higher than the objective probability warrants (DeBondt & Thaler, 1995). The biases affect both the subjective probability of future economic events and their retrospective interpretation and may create the illusion that we can control the external factors to create an optimistic future. Especially during critical events, people amplify the forecast error and perceive their personal and future conditions better than the aggregate and past ones (Bovi, 2009), so that they can be individual optimists and social pessimists at the same time (Rosner & Nagdy, 2014). In line with Buchanan and Seligman (1995), if we feel we are in control of our lives, we feel more optimistic about our situation (regardless of the objective factors) than about the national situation, which we cannot control directly.

One of the important variables explaining differences in dealing with uncertain situations, making decisions, and coping with emotions is therefore the perceived control we have over our life. The locus of control (Rotter, 1954) reflects individual differences in beliefs about the degree to which we can control the outcomes of events in our life (Galvin et al., 2018). It moderates the effects of external stressors on affective and behavioral responses (Debus et al., 2014; Jiang et al., 2020; Reknes et al., 2019). Similar to optimism, it can serve as a buffer against economic, psychological, political, and other shocks by giving the individual a sense of control and freedom to decide what to do. Individuals with an internal locus of control believe that they have control over the outcomes in their life (Twenge et al., 2004). They have a greater appreciation of freedom of choice, represented by the size of an opportunity set with mutually exclusive alternatives (Verme, 2009). People with an external locus of control believe that things happening in their lives are beyond their control and have no power in affecting them, since they happen due to chance, fate, luck, or are the result of the control by powerful others (Fong et al., 2017). They have a lower appreciation of freedom of choice, since it is regulated by the degree of perceived control, which shapes the expectations we have about the outcome of our choices (Verme, 2009). The external locus of control leads to more problems in dealing with stress and uncertainty (Debus et al., 2014; Reknes et al., 2019). Externals often blame others for their problems and adopt the victim mentality to protect their self against shame, guilt, or regret we may feel when we accept that things went wrong because of our actions (Ng et al., 2006; Twenge et al., 2004). This mentality may lead the externals to be more passive because they do not believe they can actively cope with the situation (Ng et al., 2006). Veenhoven (2000), Inglehart et al. (2008), and Verme (2009) in their analyses of relationship between happiness and other psychological variables used a “perceived fate control” variable represented by a question: “Please use this scale where 1 means ‘none at all’ and 10 means ‘a great deal’ to indicate how much freedom of choice and control you feel you have over the way your life turns out.” The question combines information on both the freedom of choice and the locus of control. Based on their studies, we may consider these variables interrelated. Since the locus of control is not measured internationally, but data on the freedom of choice are available, it may improve our understanding of the psychological variables behind consumer behavior. Hampson et al. (2020) show that the effects of the consumer confidence depend on the locus of control, with the influence of national consumer confidence significantly stronger for consumers with an external locus of control, who are more susceptible to lowered well-being in response to external stressors (Debus et al., 2014). As suggested by Sekizawa et al. (2021), cognitive evaluations of the national economy lead to behavioral changes based on whether an individual feels personally financially affected by the situation and whether the level of affectedness is strong enough to evoke emotional feelings of financial vulnerability. In Hampson et al. (2020), the locus of control served as a moderator of the relationship between the national consumer confidence and perceived financial vulnerability, defined as the probability that an individual will experience financial hardship, i.e., will not be able to maintain the current standard of living (O’Connor et al., 2019). When individuals experience higher perceived financial vulnerability, they become more price-conscious when making new purchases, as this helps to conserve financial resources (Hampson & McGoldrick, 2017). As the financial vulnerability is psychologically very taxing, it can lead to reduced well-being, physical and mental problems, or material deprivation (O’Loughlin et al., 2017). Understanding its role in consumers’ behavior and its relation to the national and personal consumer confidence and psychological variables of overall well-being, locus of control, negative or positive affect is of both theoretical and practical interest (O’Loughlin et al., 2017; Treanor, 2016).

Studies (Demirel & Artan, 2017; Kłopocka, 2017; Matošec & Obuljen Zoričić, 2019; Taylor & McNabb, 2007) agree that macroeconomic variables alone explain only a small proportion of consumer behavior. Therefore, we expect that other factors play an important role, though they may affect different consumers differently, and probably influence especially discretionary, infrequent, and planned purchases, not strictly necessary for life. Their effect may be more visible during exceptional circumstances (Desroches & Gosselin, 2002), as these result in a strong emotional reaction and affect the perception of uncertainty. The psychological concepts described above can be understood through the lenses of the cognitive appraisal theory, which shows how the cognitive evaluation of stressors (for instance, economic recession) interacts with emotions, potentially resulting in a behavioral change (Moschis, 2007). The reaction to a stressor follows an appraisal-emotion-behavior sequence (Folkman & Lazarus, 1984), where individuals evaluate to what extent a stressor potentially affects them. The cognitive appraisal leads to a positive or negative emotional response that affects our expectations about behavioral outcomes, while the locus of control or freedom of choice gives the individual a sense of how the stressor is controllable. This results in a behavioral response, which may include active or passive coping strategies and behavioral adaptations to deal with the stressor and accompanying emotions, such as hedonic shopping, over-purchasing, or saving (Hampson et al., 2020; O’Loughlin et al., 2017; Sekizawa et al., 2021; Treanor, 2016).