Parents' Mental State Communication and Children's Consumer Behavior

Abstract

Working with 420 mothers of children between the ages of 3 to 7, the current study investigated whether parents’ mental state communication affects children’s consumer behavior, specifically their purchase requests to their parents. The study hypothesized that parents’ mental state communication would reduce children’s purchase requests through parents’ active engagement in discussions about advertising with their children (i.e., active mediation) and through children’s social cognitive skills (i.e., Theory of Mind; ToM). However, results indicated that parents’ active mediation was positively associated with purchase requests by children. In addition, mental state communication was negatively associated with active mediation. Thus, although the directions of associations were different from expectations, there was a negative and indirect effect of mental state communication on purchase requests through active mediation. Moreover, children’s ToM skills were not associated with either parents’ mental state communication or children’s purchase requests, and there was no indirect effect of mental state communication on purchase requests through ToM skills. Interestingly, parents’ mental state communication had a direct and negative effect on children’s purchase requests. The present study is the first study that introduced and revealed mental state communication as one type of parental communication pattern that could decrease advertising effects in children.