In the twentieth century the significant improvement of the material standard-of-living of societies and the consequent growth of the middle class saw the term "conspicuous consumption" broadly applied to the men, women, and households who possessed the discretionary income that allowed them to practice the patterns of economic consumption—of goods and services—which were motivated by the desire for prestige, the public display of social status, rather than by the intrinsic, practical utility of the goods and the services proper. In the 1920s economists, such as Paul Nystrom (1878–1969), proposed that changes in the style of life, made feasible by the economics of the industrial age, had induced in the mass of society a "philosophy of futility" that would increase the consumption of goods and services as a social fashion – i.e. an activity done for its own sake. In that context, commentators discuss "conspicuous consumption" either as a behavioural addiction or as a narcissistic behaviour, or as both, emphasising the psychological conditions induced by consumerism—the desire for the immediate gratification of hedonic expectations.