新研究：購買奢侈品可能會造成心理負擔

Do you rarely wear the nicest items in your closet? Or are you one of the many women who wears faux rings despite owning valuable ones? 

你是不是很少穿戴自己衣櫃裏最好的服飾？或者你是那種明明買了貴重珠寶卻戴假珠寶戒指的女人？

Now you know why: it turns out that luxury items can spur a psychological rabbit hole of impostor syndrome. 

現在你知道爲什麼了：奢侈品可能會讓你陷入冒充者綜合症的心理困境。

Fancy purchases “can backfire, and make consumers feel inauthentic, producing what we call the ‘imposter syndrome from luxury consumption,'” says Nailya Ordabayeva, associate professor of marketing at the Boston College Carroll School of Management and a coauthor of a series of studies exploring luxury consumption.

購買奢侈品可能“事與願違，讓消費者感覺不真實，產生我們叫做‘奢侈消費引起的冒充者綜合症’，”奈莉亞·奧爾達巴耶娃（Nailya Ordabayeva）說，她是波士頓學院商學院副教授以及一系列奢侈品消費研究的合著者。

An all-Boston team of researchers (from Harvard, Boston College, and Boston University) conducted nine studies of over 1,000 high-end consumers, mixing surveys and observation in such luxe hotspots as a Louis Vuitton store in New York City, the Metropolitan Opera, and Martha’s Vineyard.

一個波士頓研究團隊（成員來自哈佛、波士頓學院以及波士頓大學）對1000多名高端消費者進行了九項研究，期間穿插在熱門奢侈品商店的調查和觀察，例如紐約的LV店、大都會歌劇院以及瑪莎葡萄園。

At issue is authenticity: specifically, the gap between your perceived true self and your external projected self. If you have a lower psychological sense of entitlement, you are more likely to feel inauthentic in luxury apparel—like it’s not really you but just something you’re wearing. This discord is psychologically uncomfortable. People with a high psychological sense of entitlement feel like themselves in luxury garb—and don’t hesitate to wear it.

問題在於真實感：特別是你感受到的真正自我和你外在的映射自我之間的差距。如果你的心理權利意識弱，那你穿戴奢侈品時更容易感覺不真實--就好像那不是真的你，而是你的穿着。這種不一致讓人心理上很不舒服。而權利意識強的人感覺到的是穿着奢侈服裝的自己--並且毫不猶豫地穿上。

While researchers have long known that luxury goods can elevate social recognition and status, this “psychological cost of luxury” is news to high-end retailers. Ordabayeva suggests that retailers try to stave off this psychological conflict by “boosting consumers’ feelings of deservingness” through marketing and sales tactics, so that they feel that luxury is not a privilege but well-deserved.

雖然研究者們很早就知道奢侈品可以提高社會認可和社會地位，但“奢侈品的心理成本”對於高端產品零售商來說還是新聞。奧爾達巴耶娃建議零售商通過營銷和銷售策略“讓消費者感覺自己值得這些”，這樣他們就會覺得奢侈品不是特權，而是他們應得的。

翻譯：李然