The Influence of Positive Affect on Variety Seeking Among Safe, Enjoyable Products
Abstract
In three brand-choice experiments executed on personal computers, a significant interaction was found regarding the influence of positive affect, induced by the gift of a small bag of candy or sugarless gum, on variety-seeking behavior. In three food categories (crackers, soup, and snack foods), a positive-affect manipulation increased variety-seeking behavior relative to that in the control conditions, when circumstances did not make unpleasant or negative features of the items in the choice task salient. However, when a negative feature, such as the possibility that a product would taste bad, was made more salient, there was no difference in variety-seeking behavior between the subjects who had received the small gift and the control subjects. Positive affect was also found (1) to increase the tendency of subjects to categorize nontypical items as belonging to a predefined product category, (2) to increase credibility that a product designed to reduce negative health effects would be successful, and (3) to increase variety-seeking behavior in choice sets containing the latter two types of items.
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People experiencing positive emotions show increased preference for variety and broader arrays of behavioral interests.
“People experiencing positive emotions also show increased preference for variety and broader arrays of behavioral interests (Cunningham, 1988;Kahn & Isen, 1993).”
From The Undoing Effect of Positive Emotions (2000) · cites this paper as Kahn & Isen, 1993
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- Authors
- Kahn, B. E., & Isen, A. M.
- Affiliations
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- ORCID
- Kahn, Barbara E.
- Venue
- Journal of Consumer Research
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 1993-09
- Volume
- 20
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 257
- ISSN
- 0093-5301 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-5277
- OpenAlex
- W2009752962
- Cited by
- 649
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 28 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 21 · 2021: 23 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 43 · 2018: 21 · 2017: 28 · 2016: 20 · 2015: 38 · 2014: 31 · 2013: 34 · 2012: 28
- FWCI
- 9.98
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Consumer Research (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Consumer Market Behavior and Pricing
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Consumer Behavior and Marketing Influence
- Keywords
- positive affect, variety seeking, brand choice, food products, product credibility, health effects, personal computers
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