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Concept of the Week · Episode 14
Buying things in order to show other people that you have the money to buy them. The term comes from the economist Thorstein Veblen, writing in 1899.
Explained by Professor Peter Kinderman, clinical psychologist · First published 21 October 2026 · Updated 21 October 2026
Thorstein Veblen, an American economist, coined the phrase in The Theory of the Leisure Class in 1899. He was describing the newly rich of the Gilded Age, who spent on fine houses, clothes and leisure less for their use than to display their wealth and standing to others. Economists later gave the name Veblen goods to things whose demand rises with their price, because the price is part of what is being bought. The idea has since been taken up across sociology, marketing and psychology as status signalling.
Conspicuous consumption. Buying things in order to show other people that we have the money to buy them, so that the thing is desirable because of what owning it says. The economist Thorstein Veblen named it in The Theory of the Leisure Class in 1899, and Peter's point is that it is an economics idea that has bled into psychology.
Peter's point on the show is that it is an economics idea that has bled into psychology: things are desirable not for what they do but because, once you have bought them, other people can see that you have means they do not. He owned up to quite a nice watch. The concept ran through the episode, from personalised number plates, which Peter calls a brilliant business because they sell real money for literally nothing, to Hilary's secondhand cashmere and old car, which she suspects is a humblebrag of its own.
Hear it in context
Conspicuous consumption, Burnham's headphone crackdown and prepping
Would you still buy it if nobody ever knew you owned it? The Concept of the Week is conspicuous consumption, and it runs through noisy buses, personalised number plates and the psychology of prepping.
The economist Thorstein Veblen, in The Theory of the Leisure Class, published in 1899.
Buying something mainly so that other people see you own it: an expensive watch, a designer label, a personalised number plate. On the show Peter confesses to the watch.
Peter's Triple T: ask whether you would still buy it if nobody, for the rest of human history, ever knew you owned it. If the answer is no, the purchase is mostly about being seen.
The primary literature behind the idea, for anyone who wants to check it. Also on Wikipedia.
Kinderman, P. (2026). Conspicuous consumption. Concept of the Week, Experience: Analysing Newsmakers, episode 14, with Hilary Jeffs. https://www.experiencepodco.com/concepts/conspicuous-consumption.html
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Concept of the Week is a regular feature of Experience: Analysing Newsmakers, the weekly podcast in which clinical psychologist Professor Peter Kinderman and communications expert Hilary Jeffs take the news apart to see what is driving it. Peter picks a psychological idea most of us have half-remembered wrong and explains what it actually shows. New episodes every Tuesday. Where to listen.