How looming product upgrades make us careless with what we have

When the next upgrade of our smartphone is in sight, do we become more careless with the one we own? Surely only our children would be so cavalier. But researchers have devised a suitably playful test to prove that we are indeed less careful with what we own when a better model is available.

For their recently published working paper "Be careless with that!", Silvia Bellezza and Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School and Joshua Ackerman of the University of Michigan gave participants in their experiment a cheap mug. Some of those taking part were shown better mugs that they could buy at the end of the study. Others were not aware of the potential upgrade.

The team then invited the volunteers to play a game of Jenga, in which contestants compete to dismantle a tower of wooden bricks without collapsing the pile. The free mug was placed on top. Sure enough, volunteers were more likely to go on recklessly removing bricks, risking their plain $1 mug, if they knew about the shiny $10 replacement.

Game-playing certainly beats crunching the numbers - though the academics did that, too. Looking at the data, they found people were less likely to report the loss of their iPhone when a newer model was about to go on sale.

It turns out we are all looking for ways to justify an upgrade. In another test, people primed to think about a better phone tended to exaggerate the damage to their existing one. Owners' neglect of their phones increased without their being aware why.

For the cunning marketer, these findings look like a godsend. The "upgrade effect" seems to erode our natural tendency to look after the things we own. If it also reduces criticism of built-in obsolescence, companies may find it easier to peddle more upgrades, more frequently. Ultimately, that could make us all look like mugs.

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