Highlights from Two Years Ago
April 1, 2015

April Issue           
Healthy Satiation: The Role of Decreasing Desire in Effective Self-Control
Joseph P. Redden
Kelly L. Haws

Self-control is typically viewed as a battle between willpower and desire. The authors focus on the desire side of the equation and extol the positive effect of faster satiation that makes unhealthy behaviors less tempting. Consumers higher in trait self-control demonstrate such "healthy" satiation as they satiate faster on unhealthy foods than on healthy foods. In contrast, those with lower self-control fail to consistently show this differential pattern in their satiation rates. This difference for high self-control consumers can result from faster satiation for unhealthy foods, slower satiation for healthy foods, or both in combination. Moderating and mediating evidence establish that changes in attention to the amount consumed helped account for these effects on the rate of satiation. The resulting differences in satiation influence the ultimate intake of unhealthy foods, underscoring the importance of the contribution made by differential satiation rates to overconsumption and obesity.

Goal Pursuit, Now and Later: Temporal Compatibility of Different versus Similar Means

Jordan Etkin
Rebecca K. Ratner
 

Compatibility between the degree of similarity among means to goal attainment and the anticipated timing of goal pursuit increases goal-directed motivation. Consumers are more motivated and willing to pay for means to goal attainment in the near term when they plan to use a set of different (vs. similar) means. In contrast, consumers are more motivated and willing to pay for means to goal attainment in the long term when they plan to use similar (vs. different) means. For example, consumers paid more for a personal training session when told it would include exercises for different (similar) muscle groups and would take place this week (next month). These effects are driven by the ease of processing differences (similarities) when considering the near (far) future. Similar results were obtained across various domains, including health and fitness, saving money, and academic performance.

Volume 39, Number 5, February 2013

DOI: 10.1086/667203


Commitment and Behavior Change: Evidence from the Field

Katie Baca-Motes
Amber Brown
Ayelet Gneezy
Elizabeth A. Keenan
Leif D. Nelson

Influencing behavior change is an ongoing challenge in psychology, economics, and consumer behavior research. Building on previous work on commitment, self-signaling, and the principle of consistency, a large, intensive field experiment examined the effect of hotel guest commitment to practice environmentally friendly behavior during their stay. Notably, commitment was symbolic -- guests were unaware of the experiment and of the fact that their behavior would be monitored, which allowed them to exist in anonymity and behave as they wish. When guests made a brief but specific commitment at check-in and received a lapel pin to symbolize their commitment, they were over 25% more likely to hang at least one towel for reuse, and this increased the total number of towels hung by over 40%. This research highlights how a small, carefully planned intervention can have a significant impact on behavior. Theoretical and practical implications for motivating desired behavior are discussed.

DOI: 10.1086/667226
 

Explanation Fiends and Foes: How Mechanistic Detail Determines Understanding and Preference

Philip M. Fernbach
Steven A. Sloman
Robert St. Louis
Julia N. Shube

Consumers differ in their threshold for satisfactory causal understanding and therefore in the type of explanation that will engender understanding and maximize the appeal of a novel product. Explanation fiends are dissatisfied with surface understanding and desire detailed mechanistic explanations of how products work. In contrast, explanation foes derive less understanding from detailed than coarse explanations and downgrade products that are explained in detail. Consumer attitude toward explanation is predicted by tendency to deliberate, as measured by the cognitive reflection test. Cognitive reflection also predicts susceptibility to the illusion of explanatory depth, the unjustified belief that one understands how things work. When explanation foes attempt to explain, it exposes the illusion, which leads to a decrease in willingness to pay. In contrast, explanation fiends are willing to pay more after generating explanations. The authors hypothesize that those low in cognitive reflection are explanation foes because explanatory detail shatters their illusion of understanding.

  

Volume 39, Number 5, February 2013
DOI10.1086/667782
 

Products as Signals

(Winter 2014/2015)

Curator: Page Moreau

Meaningful Choice

(Autumn 2014)

Curator: Jennifer Aaker

Decisions at a Distance

(Spring 2014)

Curator: Rebecca Hamilton

      
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