The myth of affluenza

In 2010, with Bobby Friedmann and Jason Zhang, we published "Looking for Sin in All the Wrong Places: An Empirical Investigation of the Affluenza Construct." The paper was a logical extension of my work in the area of "sin taxes," which refers to placing tax disincentives on socially dysfunctional behavior. The vague term "affluenza," floating around the pop psychology and legal domains, refers to conspicuous or excessive consumption, especially of luxe goods as a sickness, a virus of sorts, like influenza, tied to financial fecklessness rather than to physical health.

Here is the abstract:

Sin taxes, popular source of tax revenue, are best applied to antisocial and inelastic consumption. But what consumption behaviors are antisocial and addictive? This research examines the assumption that excessive antisocial consumption – affluenza – is addictive. Four hundred fourteen subjects completed a measure of affluenza. Analysis identified six factors: materialism, overspending, urgency, financial stress, shopaholicism, and self-centeredness. The results showed little evidence of the hypothesized level of affluenza in the American working population, with some limited impact of age, gender and education. Politicians looking for sins to tax may be looking in all the wrong places.

Here is the penultimate paragraph of the paper, part of the conclusion:

Affluenza is not prevalent nor is it apparently addictive. In looking for addictive, antisocial behaviors to tax, politicians need to look elsewhere. Some bad habits are not that ‘bad’, nor are they necessarily addictively ‘habitual’. Somewhat addictive bad habits can be changed with time, education, practice and incentives. For sin taxes, we suggest that politicians focus on behaviors that are addictive, antisocial, and self-destructive. In extreme cases, the ‘tax’ could be a prohibition. However, many antisocial behaviors are so enduring, pervasive and addictive that a financial tax can be an effective way to generate some public benefit from antisocial behavior. The tax can also deter the behavior, if only in a limited fashion.

And here is the entire manuscript, from the May 2010 Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management.

Looking for sin in all the wrong places.pdf

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TIME magazine picked up on our work to label affluenza as "junk science." Here are the three opening paragraphs of that critique:

Last week, 16-year-old Ethan Couch was sentenced to 10-years probation for killing four people and critically wounding two while drunk driving. Although the prosecution sought prison time, the defense argued that Couch himself was a victim and presented psychologist G. Dick Miller to testify that Couch was suffering from “affluenza” —that he lived such an extravagant, materialistic, consequence-free life that he was unable to understand or control his behavior. This is perhaps the first time having too easy a life has been considered a mitigating circumstance. The sentencing has naturally inflamed people’s opinions.

Affluenza, in fact, is not a recognized illness. It is not in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association. As a clinical psychologist, I’ve never before seen a mental health practitioner try to diagnose someone with affluenza. And there is practically nothing in the research literature about it. In the computerized database PsychINFO, the term affluenza is mentioned only 7 times (as opposed to over 101,000 for the recognized illness schizophrenia). Most of these seven were mentions or reviews of books published in the non-academic press. The only empirical research on affluenza was a 2010 study by Peter Lorenzi and Roberto Friedman in the Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management. The authors found little evidence for an affluenza epidemic sweeping America.

Affluenza seems mainly the product of pop psychology, and it doesn’t even mean what Couch’s defense lawyers intended it to mean. It is generally characterized as a contagious social disease, typified by a “keeping up with the Joneses” materialism, spending and debt. According to Gregory McNeal in Forbes, the term affluenza is often used in tax and estate law, albeit even there with some skepticism. Given all of this, how affluenza came to be so influential in a criminal case is astounding. Our legal system has protections against using junk science in court decisions. I have not read transcripts of the trial, but I would be surprised if prosecutors made no effort to challenge the use of affluenza in this case.