Huang and Sengupta studied how thinking about disease influences decisions made. They investigated “how exposure to disease-related cues influences consumers’ preference for typical (vs. atypical) product options…we predict that disease salience decreases relative preference for typical versus atypical options, because typical products are implicitly associated with many people, misaligning them with the people-avoidance motive triggered by disease cues…we argue that the focal effect will not manifest when the disease in question is explicitly described to be non-contagious, or when an anti-infection intervention is introduced, or when the decision context involves minimum infection.”
Yunhui Huang and Jaideep Sengupta. “The influence of Disease Cues on Preference for Typical Versus Atypical Products.” Journal of Consumer Research, in press, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucaa029
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.