Wanting a bite of everything: Hungry people crave mo...( Youre whale watching in Alaska longi...),Health

Youre whale watching in Alaska, longing for a margarita and a spot on a beach. You think to yourself, How did I get here" I hate the cold. Never finished Moby Dick. And I get seasick! A fascinating new study from the Journal of Consumer Research finds that when we long for something intensely like a much-needed vacation a wider array of options will sound appealing, potentially leading to some out-of-character choices. Similarly, when we are especially hungry and presented with an range of menu choices, we are more likely to deviate from our favorite meal.

This article investigated whether desire-induced perception changes can reduce loyalty to favorite[s], explain Caroline Goukens, Siegfried Dewitte, Mario Pandelaere, and Luk Warlop (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium). In general, these findings point to the power of desires to affect choice making.

For example, in the pilot study, the researchers had participants who were hungry and participants who were satiated quickly decide whether they liked or disliked twenty-eight different snacks by pressing either a red or green button. Hungry participants were asked not to eat within four hours of the experiment. Satiated participants were presented with a large piece of cake upon arrival and told they had to finish the entire thing. On average, the participants who were hungry liked two more snacks than the participants who had cake.

In another study, the researchers then tested whether diminishing desire would have an inverse effect, as they wanted to see whether it was the perceived value of the product category that drove the desire for variety. They accidentally exposed one group of participants to smelly two-day old sandwiches, messily left near one experimenter table. All participants were then asked to choose what they would like to eat every day for the next workweek from a menu of sandwiches as part of an ostensible sandwich shop contest. Among hungry participants who wer
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