Buying luxury goods can be psychologically burdensome

Do you rarely wear the nicest items in your closet? Or are you one of the many women who wears faux rings despite owning valuable ones?
你是不是很少穿戴自己衣柜里最好的服饰？或者你是那种明明买了贵重珠宝却戴假珠宝戒指的女人？
Now you know why: it turns out that luxury items can spur a psychological rabbit hole of impostor syndrome.
现在你知道为什么了：奢侈品可能会让你陷入冒充者综合症的心理困境。
Fancy purchases “can backfire, and make consumers feel inauthentic, producing what we call the ‘imposter syndrome from luxury consumption,’” says Nailya Ordabayeva, associate professor of marketing at the Boston College Carroll School of Management and a coauthor of a series of studies exploring luxury consumption.
购买奢侈品可能“事与愿违，让消费者感觉不真实，产生我们叫做‘奢侈消费引起的冒充者综合症’，”奈莉亚·奥尔达巴耶娃（Nailya Ordabayeva）说，她是波士顿学院商学院副教授以及一系列奢侈品消费研究的合著者。
An all-Boston team of researchers (from Harvard, Boston College, and Boston University) conducted nine studies of over 1,000 high-end consumers, mixing surveys and observation in such luxe hotspots as a Louis Vuitton store in New York City, the Metropolitan Opera, and Martha’s Vineyard.
一个波士顿研究团队（成员来自哈佛、波士顿学院以及波士顿大学）对1000多名高端消费者进行了九项研究，期间穿插在热门奢侈品商店的调查和观察，例如纽约的LV店、大都会歌剧院以及玛莎葡萄园。
At issue is authenticity: specifically, the gap between your perceived true self and your external projected self. If you have a lower psychological sense of entitlement, you are more likely to feel inauthentic in luxury apparel—like it’s not really you but just something you’re wearing. This discord is psychologically uncomfortable. People with a high psychological sense of entitlement feel like themselves in luxury garb—and don’t hesitate to wear it.
问题在于真实感：特别是你感受到的真正自我和你外在的映射自我之间的差距。如果你的心理权利意识弱，那你穿戴奢侈品时更容易感觉不真实–就好像那不是真的你，而是你的穿着。这种不一致让人心理上很不舒服。而权利意识强的人感觉到的是穿着奢侈服装的自己–并且毫不犹豫地穿上。
While researchers have long known that luxury goods can elevate social recognition and status, this “psychological cost of luxury” is news to high-end retailers. Ordabayeva suggests that retailers try to stave off this psychological conflict by “boosting consumers’ feelings of deservingness” through marketing and sales tactics, so that they feel that luxury is not a privilege but well-deserved.
虽然研究者们很早就知道奢侈品可以提高社会认可和社会地位，但“奢侈品的心理成本”对于高端产品零售商来说还是新闻。奥尔达巴耶娃建议零售商通过营销和销售策略“让消费者感觉自己值得这些”，这样他们就会觉得奢侈品不是特权，而是他们应得的。