Papers Published
Hagen, Linda (2021), "Pretty Healthy Food: How and When Aesthetics Enhance Perceived Healthiness," Journal of Marketing, 85 (2), 129-45.
doi.org/10.1177/0022242920944384; OSF for data/material
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doi.org/10.1177/0022242920944384; OSF for data/material
Click here for a short radio interview with BYU Radio
ABSTRACT
Marketers frequently style food to look pretty (e.g., in advertising). We investigate how pretty aesthetics (defined by classical aesthetic principles, such as order, symmetry, and balance) influence healthiness judgments. We propose that prettier food is perceived as healthier, specifically because classical aesthetic features make it appear more natural. In a pilot, six main studies, and four supplemental studies (total N = 4,301), across unhealthy and healthy, processed and unprocessed, and photographed and real foods alike, people judged prettier versions of the same food as healthier (e.g., more nutrients, less fat), despite equal perceived price. Even given financial stakes, people were misled by prettiness. Supporting the proposed naturalness process, perceived naturalness mediated the effect; belief in a natural=healthy connection moderated it; expressive aesthetics, which do not evoke naturalness, did not produce the effect (despite being pretty); and reminders of artificial modification, which suppress perceived naturalness, mitigated it. Given that pretty food styling can harm consumers by misleading healthiness judgments for unhealthy foods, managers and policy-makers should consider modification disclaimers as a tool to mitigate the pretty=healthy bias.
Hagen, Linda*, Kosuke Uetake*, Nathan Yang*, Bryan Bollinger, Allison Chaney, Daria Dzybura, Jordan Etkin, Avi Goldfarb, Liu Liu, K. Sudhir, Yanwen Wang, James Wright, and Ying Zhu (2020), "How Can Machine Learning Aid Behavioral Marketing Research?," Marketing Letters, 31 (4), 361-70. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11002-020-09535-7 *Choice Symposium session co-chairs
Abstract
Behavioral science and machine learning have rapidly progressed in recent years. As there is growing interest among behavioral scholars to leverage machine learning, we present strategies for how these methods can be of value to behavioral scientists using examples centered on behavioral research.
Hagen, Linda, Aradhna Krishna, and Brent McFerran (2019), "Outsourcing Responsibility for Indulgent Food Consumption to Prevent Negative Affect," Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 4 (2, Issue on Consumer Emotions in the Marketplace), 136-46. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/701821
Abstract
To many consumers, indulging in unhealthy treats is a “vice” and can cause unpleasant feelings, such as guilt. Nonetheless, consumers do not want to give up indulgences altogether and find ways to allow themselves guilt- free gratification. We propose a novel, calculated tactic that consumers use to avoid unpleasant feelings often associated with unhealthy eating. Four studies demonstrate that consumers proactively and strategically confer responsibility for indulgences to other people to prevent looming negative feelings about consuming the same item. In laboratory and field experiments, for unhealthy (compared to healthy) foods consumers exhibit a preference for being served a chosen food instead of serving themselves. Moderation and mediation show that this preference is driven by anticipated negative self-conscious affect, which gives rise to a motivation to avoid responsibility. Across our studies, people seek to alter the social context surrounding indulgent food consumption in this way, despite making their own food choices.
Krishna, Aradhna*, and Linda Hagen* (2019), “Out of Proportion? The Role of Leftovers in Eating-Related Affect and Behavior,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 81 (Special Issue "Health in Context"), 15-26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2018.08.005 *equal contribution
Abstract
It is well known that growing portion sizes increase consumption, but enlarged portions also cause consumers to face more and more food leftovers. Despite the relevance of food leftovers, downstream effects of having more food leftovers on consumers’ affect and behavior are unknown. In five studies, the authors test the idea that consumers may judge their consumption by looking to their leftovers, and specifically, that larger leftovers may reduce perceived consumption and thereby impact other eating-related behaviors. Using both real and imagined food consumption and leftovers, the authors find that, holding the absolute amount of food consumption equal, larger (versus smaller) food leftovers lead to reduced perceived consumption. This difference in perceived consumption has consequences for people’s motivation to compensate for their eating. Larger (versus smaller) food leftovers cause them to eat more food in a subsequent unrelated task, and also to exercise less in an explicit calorie compensation task. The psychological drivers of this phenomenon are twofold: larger leftovers reduce perceived consumption, which leads people to feel better about themselves; and feeling better about themselves, in turn, reduces people’s motivation to compensate. This research reveals a previously unknown negative consequence of enlarged portion sizes.
(covered in, e.g., Daily Mail (UK), Futurity , New Zealand Herald)
(covered in, e.g., Daily Mail (UK), Futurity , New Zealand Herald)
Hagen, Linda, Aradhna Krishna, and Brent McFerran (2017), “Rejecting Responsibility: Low Physical Involvement in Obtaining Food Promotes Unhealthy Eating,” Journal of Marketing Research, 54 (4), 589-604. http://journals.ama.org/DOI/ABS/10.1509/JMR.14.0125
Abstract
Five experiments show that less physical involvement in obtaining food leads to less healthy food choices. We find that when participants are given the choice of whether or not to consume snacks that they perceive as relatively unhealthy, they have a greater inclination to consume these snacks when less (versus more) physical involvement is required to help themselves to the food; this is not the case for snacks that they perceive as relatively healthy. Further, when participants are given the opportunity to choose their portion size, they select larger portions of unhealthy foods when less (versus more) physical involvement is required to help themselves to the food; again, this is not the case for healthy foods. We suggest that this behavior occurs because being less physically involved in serving one’s food allows participants to reject responsibility for unhealthy eating and thus to feel better about themselves following indulgent consumption. These findings add to the research on consumers’ self-serving attributions and to the growing literature on factors that nudge consumers towards healthier eating decisions.
(covered in, e.g., Forbes , Wall Street Journal , New York Magazine , Reader's Digest , Health Magazine , Good Housekeeping)
(covered in, e.g., Forbes , Wall Street Journal , New York Magazine , Reader's Digest , Health Magazine , Good Housekeeping)
O’Brien, Ed and Linda Hagen (2013), “The Thrill of (Absolute) Victory: Success among Many Enhances Emotional Payoff,” Emotion, 13 (3), 366-67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0032041
Abstract
Finds that the emotional value of placing in a given percentile of a competition (e.g., placing in the "top 10%") depends on how many competitors are involved. Five studies reveal that winning among larger groups is associated with more positive emotional reactions than winning among smaller groups, even when the objective chances for success are held constant. This effect appears to be driven by participants' intuitions about the statistical law of large numbers: when people think about success among large pools, they infer that the outcome is more diagnostic of their "true" abilities compared with identical success among small pools, which provides an affective boost .
O'Brien, Ed, Sara H. Konrath, Daniel Grühn, and Linda Hagen (2013), “Empathic Concern and Perspective Taking: Linear and Quadratic Effects of Age across the Adult Lifespan,” Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 68 (2), 168-75. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbs055
Abstract
Investigates effects of age on self-reported empathy in three large cross-sectional samples of American adults aged 18–90 years. Participants completed subscales of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis 1983), allowing us to separate emotional components (“empathic concern”) and cognitive components (“perspective taking”) of empathy across the adult life span. For both measures and in all samples, we find an inverse-U pattern across age: Middle-aged adults reported higher empathy than both young adults and older adults. Women reported greater empathy than men, but there were no systematic differences by ethnicity.
Papers in Progress
“Differential Effects of Minimalist Marketing Aesthetics on Utilitarian and Hedonic Inferences: When and Why Less Really is Less ,” solo (revising for resubmission)
“The Trap of the Gap: People Seek to Salvage Lost Time by Holding Out for Higher Value,” with Ed O’Brien (revising for resubmission)
“Too Close for Comfort: Temporal Inference in Word-of-Mouth Influence,” with Ed O'Brien (revising)
"Mobile Health Behavior Tracking: Health Effects of Tracking Consistency and Its Prediction" with Nathan Yang, Kosuke Uetake, Bärbel Knäuper, and Yikun Jiang
(MSI-funded; SSRN-draft)
(MSI-funded; SSRN-draft)
“Less Choosing, More Doing! Procedural Control Eliminates Desire for Large Assortments,” with Katherine Burson
Other Work
Tierney, W., Hardy, J. H., III., Ebersole, C., Viganola, D., Clemente, E., Gordon, M., Hoogeveen, S., Haaf, J., Dreber, A.A., Johannesson, M., Pfeiffer, T., Chapman, H., Gantman, A., Vanaman, M., DeMarree, K., Igou, E., Wylie, J., Storbeck J., Andreychik, M.R., McPhetres, J., Vaughn, L.A., Culture and Work Forecasting Collaboration, & Uhlmann, E. L. (2021), "A Creative Destruction Approach to Replication: Implicit Work and Sex Morality Across Cultures," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 93. [Member of forecasting collaboration]. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103120304005
