Sarah Jane Gilbert published an article on the Harvard Business School website today titled “The ‘Luxury Prime’: How Luxury Changes People”. In this article she interviews HBS professor Roy Y.J. Chua on the effects that luxuries have on a person.

HBS professor Roy Y.J. Chua and Xi Zou, an assistant professor at London Business School, suggest that luxury goods have an important effect on human behavior that is only now becoming clear—and that may have implications for addressing the continuation of objectionable choices among, for example, high-flying executives on Wall Street.

According to Chua, their research found that “people who were made to think about luxury prior to a decision-making task have a higher tendency to endorse self-interested decisions that might potentially harm others.” Their findings are detailed in the HBS working paper “The Devil Wears Prada? Effects of Exposure to Luxury Goods on Cognition and Decision Making” [PDF].

Read the full article here. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on this article’s subject. Do you think certain luxuries change people?