Hunger promotes acquisition of nonfood objects.
Hunger motivates people to consume food, for which finding and acquiring food is a prerequisite. We test whether the acquisition component spills over to nonfood objects: Are hungry people more likely to acquire objects that cannot satisfy their hunger? Five laboratory and field studies show that hunger increases the accessibility of acquisition-related concepts and the intention to acquire not only food but also nonfood objects. Moreover, people act on this intention and acquire more nonfood objects (e.g., binder clips) when they are hungry, both when these items are freely available and when they must be paid for. However, hunger does not influence how much they like nonfood objects. We conclude that a basic biologically based motivation can affect substantively unrelated behaviors that cannot satisfy the motivation. This presumably occurs because hunger renders acquisition-related concepts and behaviors more accessible, which influences decisions in situations to which they can be applied.
Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455; alisonxu@umn.edu.
Alison Jing
AJ
Xu
Department of Psychology and Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089; and.
Norbert
N
Schwarz
Department of Marketing, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Robert S
RS
Wyer
D000328:Adult; D001519:Behavior; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D006815:Hunger; D008297:Male; D013217:Starvation / Q000523:psychology*
food vs. nonfood; hunger; mindset; spillover effect; wanting vs. liking