Marketing Seminar（2017-09）

Title:The Social Path to Satiation: Another Person's Food Consumption Reduces Desire for that Food

Speaker:YanpingTu, University of Florida

Time:Friday, May 5, 13:30-15:00

Place:Room 217, Guanghua Building 2

Abstract

This research finds that learning about another person’s food consumption reduces desire to consume that food—a phenomenon we title “vicarious satiation.” Specifically, people desire food consumed by others less the more others have had it (study 1), postpone consumption of food others have had (study 2), and switch to a different food offering (study 3). Vicarious satiation is the outcome of blurred interpersonal boundaries, as people experience other people’s consumption as their own. Indeed, vicarious satiation attenuates among socially distant individuals (e.g., between people who hold opposing political views; study 4). Notably, vicarious satiation is sensory-specific—others’ food consumption reduces desire for similar foods only (studies 4 and 5), and it does not require simulating others’ consumption; merely reading about others’ food consumption can satiate (study 5).

Introduction

Yanping Tu is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Florida. She studies social influence, judgment and decision making, motivation and happiness. Her work has been published in major marketing and psychology journals, such as the Journal of Consumer Research and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and been covered by major media, such as the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, The Economist, Scientific American, NPR, and so on. She holds a PhD in Marketing and an MBA from the University of Chicago, and a BS in Psychology and BA in Economics from Peking University.

See more about her research athttps://sites.google.com/site/yanpingtu/.

Your participation is warmly welcomed!