Journal of Consumer Research
January 10, 2012
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Current Issue Highlights

The Influence of Bite Size on Quantity of Food Consumed: A Field Study

Arul Mishra
Himanshu Mishra
Tamara M. Masters

While research has extensively investigated how portion sizes can influence the quantity of food consumed, relatively little work has been done to explore how bite size influences overall consumption. This research seeks to address this concern. In a field study, the authors collected data in a restaurant and manipulated bite size by providing diners with small or large forks. Diners consumed more from smaller rather than larger forks. Utilizing motivation literature, which ties into the unique factors present in a restaurant consumption setting (e.g., diners have a well-defined goal of hunger satiation because they invest effort by visiting a specific restaurant, choose from a menu, and pay money for the meal), the authors present their rationale for the pattern of results. Moreover, in a controlled lab study the authors demonstrate that when these factors are absent, the pattern of results is reversed.  

 

Volume 38, Number 5, February 2012
DOI: 10.1086/660838

 

Selected Media Mentions 

   
MSNBC
  
TIME Magazine
  
 
US News & World Report
         
The Huffington Post  
           
EurekAlert!

Affective Influences on Evaluative Processing   

Paul M. Herr
Christine M. Page
Bruce E. Pfeiffer
Derick F. Davis

The past three decades have seen considerable debate about affect's influence on judgment. In three experiments, following manipulations of incidental, integral, and cognitively based affect, positive affect results in more efficient processing while negative affect appears to make judgments both less efficient and more effortful. Affect's influence is inferred from the consistency of participants' responses and the pattern of the positive-negative response latency asymmetry reported by Herr and Page, in which positive judgments appear to be relatively effortless and automatic while negative judgments require effortful and controlled processing. Positive affect reduced or eliminated the asymmetry while negative affect exacerbated it. Affect's influence appears consistent with a view of positive affect-induced processing efficiency.

 

Volume 38, Number 5, February 2012
DOI: 10.1086/660844

 

Selected Media Mentions 


How Marketplace Performances Produce Interdependent Status Games and Contested Forms of Symbolic Capital

Tuba �st�ner
Craig J. Thompson

Consumer researchers have commonly analyzed marketplace performances as liminal events structured by context-specific role playing, norms of reciprocity, and cocreative collaborations. As a consequence, this literature remains theoretically mute on questions related to the sociological disparities that arise when marketplace performances forge relationships between affluent consumers and underclass service workers: a circumstance becoming increasingly commonplace owing to trends in the service-oriented global economy. To redress this gap, the authors analyze how such sociocultural differences are manifested and mediated in the provisions of skilled marketplace performances. Building upon Bourdieu's logic of field analysis, the resulting theoretical framework illuminates a network of structural relations that reconfigures the asymmetrical distribution of class-based resources between these class factions. Rather than being cooperative endeavors conducive to the formation of commercial friendships, these class-stratified marketplace performances produce interdependent status games, subtly manifested power struggles, and contested forms of symbolic capital.  

 

DOI: 10.1086/660815

Selected Media Mentions

 

Service as Performance: The "Symbolic Capital" of Turkish Hairdressers
Freakonomics
    
RedOrbit 
    
EurekAlert!

The Dynamics of Goal Revision: A Cybernetic Multiperiod Test-Operate-Test-Adjust-Loop (TOTAL) Model of Self-Regulation

Chen Wang
Anirban Mukhopadhyay

This research presents a comprehensive conceptual model of the dynamics of goal revision over multiple periods. First, based on an integrative literature review, the authors derive four principles that govern how individuals update their goals over time (monotonicity, diminishing sensitivity, aspiration maximization, and performance satisficing). The authors then integrate these principles logically as well as mathematically into a goal-discrepancy response function. Next, they advance existing cybernetic models of self-regulation by synthesizing the four principles and the response function into a Test-Operate-Test-Adjust-Loop (TOTAL) model, which captures the dynamics of goal revision in self-regulation. Four laboratory experiments demonstrate initial support for the postulates of our model and conclude with a discussion of limitations and future directions.  

 

Volume 38, Number 5, February 2012
DOI: 10.1086/660853

  

Selected Media Mentions

  

How Do Consumers Revise Their Unreachable Goals?

RedOrbit

    

How Do Consumers Revise Their Unreachable Goals?

Science Daily

    

How do consumers revise their unreachable goals?
EurekAlert!


The Beauty of Boundaries: When and Why We Seek Structure in Consumption

Keisha M. Cutright

How do consumers cope when it seems that they have no control over their outcomes in life? This research posits that consumers will seek greater structure in consumption-or the sense that everything is in its designated place. Moreover, it suggests that very simple boundaries in the environment offer a means for attaining this sense of structure. Several experiments demonstrate that when personal control is threatened, consumers prefer logos, products, and environments that are tangibly or intangibly bounded over those that are unbounded. This research also explores the functional and symbolic benefits that boundaries provide as representations of order and structure.

 

Volume 38, Number 5, February 2012
DOI: 10.1086/661563

 

Selected Media Mentions

 

Feeling out of Control? Consumers Find Comfort in Boundaries

Science Daily

 

PhysOrg.com

EurekAlert!
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