0000000000418842
AUTHOR
Valdimar Sigurdsson
Seasonal cues to food scarcity and calorie cravings: Winter cues elicit preferences for energy-dense foods
Abstract Winter cues signal a scarcity of food. Birds and mammals respond to such environmental cues by consuming more energy. They convert this surplus into body fat that serves as a buffer against impending food shortages. Similarly, humans exhibit higher obesity rates among food-insecure populations. However, to date, it has been unclear whether winter cues qualitatively affect consumers’ food preferences. Results from five studies ( N = 865), with one of them preregistered, show that watching videos depicting winter cues elicits thoughts about energy-dense foods and survival. Such cues elicit higher preferences for energy-dense than low-calorie foods, as verified by meta-analytic eviden…
Crisis communication, anticipated food scarcity, and food preferences: Preregistered evidence of the insurance hypothesis
Abstract Whereas large-scale consumption of energy-dense foods contributes to climate change, we investigated whether exposure to climate change-induced food scarcity affects preferences toward these foods. Humans’ current psychological mechanisms have developed in their ancestral evolutionary past to respond to immediate threats and opportunities. Consequently, these mechanisms may not distinguish between cues to actual food scarcity and cues to food scarcity distant in time and space. Drawing on the insurance hypothesis, which postulates that humans should respond to environmental cues to food scarcity through increased energy consumption, we predicted that exposing participants to climat…
Viral Viruses and Modified Mobility: Cyberspace Disease Salience Predicts Human Movement Patterns
Humans have a motivational system that influences cognition and behavior to minimize the risk of contact with pathogens whenever cues to disease emerge. The current research examines the relationship between cyberspace disease salience and mobility behavior at the macro and micro levels. Across three studies, we predict and find that people adjust their mobility behavior to minimize the risk of close physical contact with strangers when cyberspace disease salience is high (vs. low). Study 1 examines web searches for terms related to the pandemic to determine relatively high and low disease salience periods in cyberspace. In Study 2, we analyze hourly sales data from five grocery stores and …
Development and psychometric evaluation of the Anticipated Food Scarcity Scale (AFSS).
Mass media extensively inform societies about events threatening the global food supply (e.g., pandemics or Brexit). Consumers exposed to such communication may perceive food resources as becoming scarcer. In line with the evolutionary account, these perceptions can shift decision-making in domains such as food preferences or prosociality. However, the current literature has solely focused on actual and past food insecurity experiences threatening mostly low-income families, thus neglecting the future-oriented perceptions among the general population. This paper broadens the food insecurity research scope by developing a new construct—anticipated food scarcity (AFS)—which is defined as the …