When Does Anxiety Increase Attempts to Spend Time and Money Efficiently?

Consumers today are anxious. How does this anxiety influence how they spend their time and money? Five experiments demonstrate that when consumers feel anxious because they are making insufficient progress toward a goal, they attempt to use their resources more efficiently while making decisions unrelated to the goal. This desire to be efficient makes them more likely to (a) choose jobs that offer higher payout rates rather than a higher total payout, (b) perform tasks simultaneously rather than sequentially (i.e., multitask), and (c) select products and activities that cost less money and time than usual (i.e., price and time discounts). However, anxiety increases efficiency-seeking only when consumers are anxious about slow goal progress, rather than when they are anxious about threats outside their control (terrorism, disease, climate change, etc.) or when they feel that time is scarce, but they are not behind on their goal. Furthermore, the desire to be efficient occurs only when consumers feel anxious, not merely when they fall behind on a goal but do not feel anxious.