Reducing Satiation: The Role of Categorization Level

People usually like experiences less as they repeat them: they satiate. This research finds that people satiate less if they categorize the consumption episodes at lower levels. For instance, as people ate more jelly beans, their enjoyment declined less quickly when the candy was categorized specifically (e.g., cherry, orange) rather than generally (e.g., jelly bean). Three studies demonstrate this "specificity effect" for people's ratings of enjoyment both during and immediately after consumption. Process evidence shows that subcategorization focuses people's attention on differentiating aspects, making the episodes seem less repetitive and consequently less satiating. (c) 2008 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

[1]  C. Sansone,et al.  Once a boring task always a boring task? Interest as a self-regulatory mechanism. , 1992, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[2]  Dale T. Miller,et al.  Norm theory: Comparing reality to its alternatives , 1986 .

[3]  E. Rolls,et al.  Pleasantness changes and food intake in a varied four-course meal , 1984, Appetite.

[4]  Robin R. Vallacher,et al.  What do people think they're doing? Action identification and human behavior. , 1987 .

[5]  D. Simons,et al.  Failure to detect changes to attended objects in motion pictures , 1997 .

[6]  J. O'hanlon,et al.  Boredom: practical consequences and a theory. , 1981, Acta psychologica.

[7]  Eric T. Bradlow,et al.  The Variety of an Assortment , 1999 .

[8]  S. Swindell,et al.  General-process theories of motivation revisited: The role of habituation. , 1999 .

[9]  D. Campbell,et al.  Hedonic relativism and planning the good society , 1971 .

[10]  D. Berlyne,et al.  Aesthetics and Psychobiology , 1975 .

[11]  Kathy E. Johnson,et al.  Effects of varying levels of expertise on the basic level of categorization. , 1997, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[12]  F. Mcsweeney,et al.  Criticisms of the satiety hypothesis as an explanation for within-session decreases in responding. , 2000, Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior.

[13]  D. Berlyne,et al.  Aesthetics and psychobiology , 1975 .

[14]  Z. Vickers,et al.  Effect of Flavor and Macronutrient Composition of Food Servings on Liking, Hunger and Subsequent Intake , 1993, Appetite.

[15]  Edmund T. Rolls,et al.  Sensory specific satiety in man , 1981, Physiology & Behavior.

[16]  E. Rosch,et al.  Categorization of Natural Objects , 1981 .

[17]  Rebecca K. Ratner,et al.  Choosing less-preferred experiences for the sake of variety. , 1999 .

[18]  R. Herrnstein,et al.  Melioration: A Theory of Distributed Choice , 1991 .

[19]  Allen Parducci,et al.  Happiness, Pleasure, and Judgment: The Contextual Theory and Its Applications , 1995 .

[20]  Victoria J. Burley,et al.  The time course of sensory-specific satiety , 1989, Appetite.

[21]  L. Epstein,et al.  The effects of calories and taste on habituation of the human salivary response. , 1993, Addictive behaviors.

[22]  L. Epstein,et al.  Dietary variety, energy regulation, and obesity. , 2001, Psychological bulletin.

[23]  M. Moscovitch,et al.  What Causes Humans to Begin and End a Meal? A Role for Memory for What Has Been Eaten, as Evidenced by a Study of Multiple Meal Eating in Amnesic Patients , 1998 .

[24]  Julie R. Irwin,et al.  Walking the Hedonic Product Treadmill: Default Contrast and Mood-Based Assimilation in Judgments of Predicted Happiness with a Target Product , 2001 .

[25]  B. Rolls.  Sensory-specific satiety. , 2009, Nutrition reviews.

[26]  B. Kahn,et al.  The Influence of Assortment Structure on Perceived Variety and Consumption Quantities , 2004 .

[27]  David W. Schumann,et al.  Predicting the Effectiveness of Different Strategies of Advertising Variation: A Test of the Repetition-Variation Hypotheses , 1990 .

[28]  E. Rolls,et al.  How sensory properties of foods affect human feeding behavior , 1982, Physiology & Behavior.

[29]  Barbara E. Kahn,et al.  Perceptions of assortment variety: The effects of congruency between consumers’ internal and retailers’ external organization , 2005 .

[30]  J. Tanaka,et al.  Object categories and expertise: Is the basic level in the eye of the beholder? , 1991, Cognitive Psychology.

[31]  I. Simonson.  The Effect of Purchase Quantity and Timing on Variety-Seeking Behavior , 1990 .

[32]  Andrea Maier,et al.  Sensory-specific satiety, its crossovers, and subsequent choice of potato chip flavors , 2007, Appetite.

[33]  Wayne D. Hoyer,et al.  Consumers’ Perceptions of the Assortment Offered in a Grocery Category: The Impact of Item Reduction , 1998 .

[34]  J. Jeffrey Inman,et al.  The Role of Sensory‐Specific Satiety in Attribute‐Level Variety Seeking , 2001 .

[35]  Jacob Beck,et al.  Adaptation-level theory. , 1974 .

[36]  H. Helson,et al.  Adaptation-level theory , 1964 .

[37]  George S. Avrunin,et al.  Single-Peaked Functions and the Theory of Preference. , 1977 .

[38]  D. Kahneman,et al.  Well-being : the foundations of hedonic psychology , 1999 .

[39]  D. R. Brown,et al.  Stimulus-similarity and the anchoring of subjective scales. , 1953, The American journal of psychology.

[40]  General-process theories of motivation revisited: The role of habituation. , 1999 .

[41]  Jack B. Soll,et al.  Mental Budgeting and Consumer Decisions , 1996 .