What five studies reveal about Black Friday misbehavior

Every year, the day after American Thanksgiving heralds the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season. News reports and social media feeds fill with images of massive crowds, long lines, and sometimes, outright chaos. Shoppers have been trampled, pepper-sprayed, and involved in physical fights over discounted televisions and toys. For many, this behavior is a shocking spectacle. For a growing number of researchers, it is a rich field of inquiry.

What transforms an ordinary person into an aggressive competitor in a retail store? Is it the crowds, the deals, or something deeper about our culture? What happens in our minds and bodies that can lead to such behavior? Scientists from criminology, marketing, and psychology have been exploring these questions. By observing shoppers in the wild, conducting surveys, and running controlled experiments, they are building a picture of the forces at play. Their work follows a process of discovery: identifying a question, designing a method to seek answers, and analyzing what they find.

A Question of Culture: Is Bad Behavior a Break from the Norm, or an Embrace of It? (2015)

When Black Friday sales took root in the United Kingdom, they brought with them scenes of disorder familiar to American audiences. In 2014, police were called to stores across the country to handle reports of violence and chaos. Researchers Thomas Raymen and Oliver Smith saw this not just as a series of isolated incidents, but as a cultural phenomenon worth examining. Their central question was whether this behavior represented a deviation from societal norms or something else entirely.

Psychology of Selling

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To investigate, they conducted an ethnographic study during the 2014 Black Friday sales in Newcastle upon Tyne, a city in the northeast of England. This research approach involved immersing themselves in the environment they were studying. They went into the stores, observed the crowds, and conducted 27 on-the-spot interviews with shoppers. This allowed them to collect qualitative data, capturing the thoughts and justifications of people in the midst of the event.

Their observations and interviews suggested that the aggressive behavior was not a rejection of social values. Instead, they argued it displayed a form of hyper-conformity to the principles of a competitive consumer culture. The pushing, shoving, and strategic maneuvering, while appearing anti-social, were seen by the participants as necessary tactics to succeed in the goal of acquiring discounted goods. One 26-year-old woman, Emily, described her strategy in detail: “Proppa shot in there quick when the doors opened, overtook about 4 people within the first few seconds… Gotta use yer head… It’s a bit like wild kingdom in there. Survival of the fittest!”

The researchers found that this mentality cut across a wide spectrum of demographic backgrounds. What united the shoppers was a shared commitment to consumption. Raymen and Smith connected this behavior to broader economic shifts, where stable, collective identities based on industry and community have been replaced by more fluid identities formed through the acquisition of consumer goods. In this context, the chaos of Black Friday appeared as an extreme expression of the everyday competition that defines modern consumerism.

An Emotional Trigger: How Feelings and Personality Shape Shopper Actions (2017)

Observers and shoppers often describe the Black Friday experience as an emotional one, filled with everything from excitement to frustration. A team of researchers led by Sharron J. Lennon sought to understand how these emotions, along with key personality traits, might contribute to consumer misbehavior. They also wanted to know if these factors affected men and women in different ways.

The researchers designed an online study involving 411 university students who had previously shopped in-store on Black Friday. Participants were randomly shown one of several written scenarios simulating a realistic shopping situation. Some scenarios described the thrill of successfully getting a “door-buster” deal, while others described the anger of finding an item sold out or being denied a discount at the checkout. After reading the scenario, participants rated the likelihood they would engage in various misbehaviors, such as pushing or shouting. They also completed questionnaires to measure their levels of self-control and public self-consciousness, which is the tendency to be aware of how others see you.

The results showed that emotion was a powerful factor for both men and women. Both a positive emotion, the thrill of success, and a negative one, anger from frustration, were linked with a higher likelihood of misbehavior. This suggests that the intense emotional arousal of the event, whether positive or negative, can fuel disruptive actions.

Where men and women differed was in how personality traits came into play. For men, self-control was a significant factor. Men with higher self-control reported a lower likelihood of misbehaving. This trait also appeared to act as a buffer; when men were placed in a scenario designed to make them angry, those with high self-control were less likely to report they would misbehave compared to angry men with low self-control.

For women, self-control did not show the same link to behavior in this study. Instead, public self-consciousness had a complex effect. When women were in a low-anger situation, being highly aware of how others saw them was associated with a lower likelihood of misbehavior. When they were in a high-anger situation, the opposite happened. Women high in public self-consciousness became more likely to report they would misbehave, not less.

The Shopping Environment: Do Crowds and Rude Customers Fuel Misconduct? (2014)

Beyond a shopper’s individual psychology, what role does the store environment itself play? Another study led by Sharron J. Lennon investigated how two specific situational factors, perceived crowding and the presence of unpleasant fellow customers, might lead to misbehavior. The research team also looked at whether a shopper’s feeling of being treated unfairly, a concept known as perceived inequity, was part of the process.

To test these relationships, the researchers surveyed 260 people who had shopped on Black Friday. The participants, a mix of students and non-students, completed a questionnaire about their experiences. They rated how crowded they felt the stores were, the extent to which they witnessed unpleasant behavior from other shoppers, and their own feelings of being treated unfairly by the retailers. They also reported the frequency with which they themselves had engaged in a list of ten different misbehaviors.

The analysis of the survey data revealed two distinct pathways. The first involved unpleasant customers. The study found that witnessing misbehavior from other shoppers was linked to an increase in a participant’s own feelings of inequity. This sense of unfairness was then, in turn, associated with a higher frequency of their own misbehavior. In essence, the data pointed to a chain of events: seeing others act badly made people feel the situation was unfair, which then made them more likely to act badly themselves.

The second pathway, involving crowding, showed a different pattern. The researchers found that higher perceptions of crowding were associated with *less* perceived inequity and *less* self-reported misbehavior. They suggest that shoppers may expect crowds on Black Friday. The crowds might even be part of the excitement of the event, signaling that the deals are valuable. Because the crowding was anticipated, it did not lead to the same feelings of unfairness that witnessing unexpected bad behavior did.

A Profile of Misbehavior: Identifying Personal Predictors (2013)

Are some people simply more prone to Black Friday misbehavior than others? Researchers, again including Sharron J. Lennon, examined a set of personal characteristics to see which ones might predict a greater likelihood of acting out. The factors they looked at included demographics like sex and age, personality traits like narcissism and social desirability, and a person’s previous experience with the shopping event.

The team conducted an online experiment with 402 students. As in one of their later studies, participants were presented with scenarios describing different shopping outcomes, such as a successful purchase or a frustrating stockout. Their key dependent variable was the participants’ self-reported likelihood of engaging in misbehavior. Along with this, the study collected data on their personal traits using established psychological scales for narcissism and social desirability, which is the tendency to answer questions in a way that will be viewed favorably by others.

The findings pointed to several personal factors being linked to the likelihood of misbehavior. Men were more likely than women to report that they would misbehave. A person’s history with the event also mattered; shoppers with more years of Black Friday experience reported a higher likelihood of misconduct.

The personality traits also showed clear relationships. Narcissism, a trait characterized by a sense of entitlement and a lack of empathy, was positively associated with the likelihood of misbehaving. On the other hand, social desirability was negatively related. People who scored high on the tendency to present themselves in a positive light reported a lower likelihood of engaging in disruptive behavior. In this particular sample of students, age did not emerge as a significant predictor.

The Power of the Ad: Can Scarcity Promotions Prime Aggression? (2016)

The incidents of Black Friday violence often occur inside a store, in the heat of the moment. But a team of researchers led by Kirk Kristofferson wondered if the problematic behavior might actually start much earlier. Their question was whether mere exposure to a certain type of advertisement could predispose consumers to act aggressively before they even left their homes.

They focused on scarcity promotions, a marketing tactic that emphasizes limited availability. Across seven different studies, they explored how this message affects consumer psychology and behavior. The methods were varied. In one experiment, participants viewed a promotional ad for an iPhone. For one group, the ad said “Only 3 Available” (high scarcity). For the other, it said “3,000+ Available” (low scarcity). Afterward, under the guise of a separate study, participants played a first-person shooter video game. The researchers measured aggression by counting how many bullets each person fired.

Another study used a more physical measure. After viewing a similar scarcity or control ad, participants were sent to try and buy a candy bar from a vending machine that had been rigged to jam. A hidden camera recorded their behavior, and researchers coded the number and intensity of physical assaults on the machine, such as hitting, shaking, or kicking it. A third study took saliva samples and found that male participants exposed to the scarcity ad showed elevated levels of testosterone, a hormone linked to aggression.

The results were consistent across the experiments. Exposure to a limited-quantity scarcity ad led to more aggressive behavior. Participants who saw the “Only 3 Available” ad fired more bullets, were more physically aggressive toward the malfunctioning vending machine, and showed physiological changes associated with aggression.

The researchers proposed that these ads work by increasing a “perceived competitive threat.” The message that a product is scarce makes consumers view other shoppers as direct rivals for that resource. This perception of threat appears to trigger a physiological readiness to compete aggressively. The team tested this idea by looking at a different type of scarcity: limited time (“One Day Only”) versus limited quantity. They found that limited-time promotions did not produce the same aggressive response. This is because a time limit puts the consumer in competition with the clock, not with other shoppers, reducing the sense of competitive threat from others. The research suggests that the seeds of Black Friday conflict may be planted not just in the store aisle, but in the very ads that draw people there.