You seem different. More anxious. Pensive, perhaps. What's on your mind?

A lot of people desperately want to know. Market researchers always want to get inside the heads of consumers, and they've never been more curious than they are now. In the aftermath of a wrenching recession, Americans are saving more, spending less, and rethinking many of the tenets that have governed middle-class living for the past 40 years. Vast amounts of money are at stake, as consumer-product firms try to guess how Americans will spend their scarce dollars in the future.

Are shoppers beaten down? Will thrifty spending endure? Or will the irrepressible American consumer come roaring back stronger than ever? Nobody's quite sure, but here are ways consumers seem to be changing, based on economic data, market-research studies and dozens of reports from customers themselves: