Status without cost: how color darkness can increase preferences and perceptions of status

Abstract

Status signals are traditionally assumed to entail costs. Yet consumers often infer status from visual cues that involve little or no cost, such as darker colors in products. This research examines how and when non-costly product elements, such as color darkness, can signal status despite lacking the cost emphasized in costly signaling literature. Across six studies, we demonstrate that darker colors increase consumers’ perceptions of status and consequently product preferences for consumers actively seeking status. Besides this active motivation, these effects depend on cognitive conditions that determine whether associations between dark colors and status get activated. The effects are attenuated when color darkness is made explicit, but reemerge under cognitive busyness that limits cognitive processing. By identifying conditions under which non-costly signals increase perceptions of status, this research helps reconcile a theoretical debate about the costly nature of status signals, and advances understanding of how consumers interpret symbolic cues.