In an op-ed piece for the NY Times on August 8, 2011, Diane Ackerman reports on a recently reported study in the Journal of Consumer Relations by Dan King and Chris Janiszewski called "Affect-Gating," which will appear in the Journal of Consumer Research in December, 2011.
A JSTOR press release summarizes their findings: "Animal instincts: Why do unhappy consumers prefer tactile sensations?"
(link to press release published online June 7, 2011 here)
[Note -- the article has yet to appear]
Apparently, when we feel bad, we want the comforts of touch and looking around at the wide, wide, scary world has less appeal.
Well, no duh.
Not only does most personal experience confirm this, but a combination of cognitive research about emotion and behavior and standard psychological studies do too. (Antonio D'Amasio and Harry Harlow's baby monkeys may come to mind here.) The study authors link primed visual sensory systems with emotional confidence and tactile priming with negative emotive states.
In other words, "I'm writing a paper and I want my binkie!" (Seriously, this blog was typed while a paper was due... at least the sensation of typing was soothing...)
But, of course, modern marketing, along with behavioral economics, has taken using the results of such research in a new direction.
Thus King and Janiszewski correlate their mammalian research to consumer behavior -- a product's sensory attributes need to feel just right to the buyer, and that depends on how the shopper feels.
(Ok, how do they know how Consumer Goldilocks is feeling when she's shopping? What if her shoes are pinching? How would the store try to control for emotional state? What about other cultures, when gaze is conditioned differently? Just wondering...)
As Ackerman explains, making comfort foods and other consumer materials just right is terribly important in order to increase sales.
This also makes sense.
Ackerman's connection to evolution and how humans override it, however, isn't terribly well-made. If she's trying to score a point in the ongoing nature vs. nuture debate, or the mind-body controversy, or the intellectual vs. capitalist games, it went past me. She seems to be saying that we are at the mercy of our bodies, emotionally and physically. Hmmm.
Well, this may explain why I -- and other academics -- want to eat nonstop when writing research papers...
Potato chip anyone?
Originating article:
Evolution’s Gold Standard
By DIANE ACKERMAN
Published: August 8, 2011
"Why we humans seem to want for little but are craving nonstop."
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