Diderot effect

The term was coined by anthropologist and scholar of consumption patterns Grant McCracken in 1986,[4] and is named after the French philosopher Denis Diderot (1713–1784), who first described the effect in an essay titled "Regrets for my Old Dressing Gown, or, A warning to those who have more taste than fortune".

[5] In this essay Diderot tells how the gift of a beautiful scarlet dressing gown leads to unexpected results, eventually plunging him into debt.

"I was absolute master of my old dressing gown", Diderot writes, "but I have become a slave to my new one ... Beware of the contamination of sudden wealth.

Sociologist and economist Juliet Schor uses the term in her 1992 book The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need to describe processes of competitive, status-conscious consumption driven by dissatisfaction.

Schor's 2005 essay "Learning Diderot's Lesson: Stopping the Upward Creep of Desire" describes the effect in contemporary consumer culture in the context of its negative environmental consequences.