Refereed Journal Publications

Pancer, Ethan, Theodore J. Noseworthy, Lindsay McShane, Nukhet Taylor, and Matthew Philp (2024) "Robots in the Kitchen: The Automation of Food Preparation in Restaurants and the Compounding Effects of Perceived Love and Disgust on Consumer Evaluations," Appetite.

Abstract: Restaurants are swiftly embracing automation to prepare food, experimenting with innovations from robotic arms for frying foods to pizza-making robots. While these advances promise to enhance efficiency and productivity, their impact on consumer psychology remains largely unexplored. We present four experiments that demonstrate how food service automation leads to negative downstream effects (i.e., diminished taste perceptions, decreased willingness to pay, less favorable attitudes towards food items) across multiple food categories. This stems in part from two distinct contagion effects, whereby automation appears to undermine the food’s ability to contain symbolic love (positive contagion from human contact) while simultaneously increasing feelings of disgust (negative contagion from machine contact). Moreover, we highlight how communicating the consumer-oriented benefits of automation can suppress the disgust associated with automation and subsequently mitigate the deleterious effects on consumer evaluations. Our findings suggest that service retailers should consider the psychological impact on consumers when shifting away from human involvement in a category as intimate and consequential as the production of our food.

Taylor, Nukhet and Sean T. Hingston (2024) "Slow and Steady or Fast and Furious: How Movement Speed in the Digital Medium Impacts Consumers’ Risk Judgments," European Journal of Marketing, 58(13), 159-83.

Purpose. Fueled by the soaring popularity of the digital medium, consumers are increasingly relying on dynamic images to inform their decisions. However, little is known about how changes in the presentation of movement impacts these decisions. The purpose of this paper is to document whether and how movement speed–a fundamental characteristic of dynamic images in the digital medium–influences consumers' risk judgments and subsequent decisions.

Design/methodology/approach. Three experimental studies investigate the impact of movement speed displayed in the digital medium, focusing on different risk-laden domains including health (pilot study), gambling (Study 1) and stock market decisions (Study 2).

Findings. The authors find that faster movement speed displayed in the digital medium elevates consumers’ feelings of risk and elicits cautionary actions in response. The authors reveal a mechanism for this effect, showing that faster movement reduces feelings of control over outcomes, which predicts greater feelings of risk.

Research limitations/implications. Future work could expand upon these findings by systematically examining whether certain individuals are more susceptible to movement speed effects in the digital medium. Research could also investigate whether different ways of experiencing movement speed (e.g. physical movement) similarly influence risk judgments and whether movement speed can have positive connotations outside of risky domains.

Practical implications. The authors offer important insights to marketing practitioners and public policymakers seeking to guide consumers’ judgments and decisions in risk-laden contexts through the digital medium.

Originality/value. By showing how movement speed alters judgments in risk-laden contexts, the authors contribute to literature on risk perception and the growing body of literature examining how moving images shape consumers’ behaviors.

Taylor, Nukhet and Theodore J. Noseworthy (2021) "Your Fries are Less Fattening than Mine: How Food Sharing Biases Fattening Judgments Without Biasing Caloric Estimates," Journal of Consumer Psychology, 31(4), 773-83

Abstract: Food sharing has become quite popular over the last decade, with companies offering food options specifically designed to be shared. As the popularity has grown, so too has concerns over the potential negative impact on consumer health. Despite companies’ explicit claims to the contrary, critics maintain that food sharing may be encouraging excessive caloric intake. The current article provides the first systematic exploration of why this may be happening. Three main and two supplementary studies suggest that food sharing reduces perceived ownership, which, in turn, leads people to mentally decouple calories from their consequence. Thus, sharing can reduce the perceived fattening potential of a consumption episode without biasing caloric estimates. This phenomenon persists even when explicit caloric information is provided, and it applies to both healthy and unhealthy foods. Importantly, we establish a relevant downstream consequence by illustrating that people tend to subsequently select calorie-dense foods after underestimating the fattening potential of a shared consumption episode. A roadmap for future research and practical implications are discussed.

Taylor, Nukhet, and Theodore J. Noseworthy (2020) "Compensating for Innovation: Extreme Product Incongruity Encourages Consumers to Affirm Unrelated Consumption Schemas," Journal of Consumer Psychology, 30(1), 77-95

Abstract: New products are often extremely incongruent with expectations. The inability to make sense of these products elevates anxiety and leads to negative evaluations. Although scholars have predominantly focused on combating the negative response to extreme incongruity, we propose that extreme incongruity may have implications that extend beyond the category. We base our predictions on the concept of fluid compensation, which suggests that when people struggle to make sense of something, they will nonconsciously reinforce highly accessible schemas in unrelated domains. Four studies confirm that extreme incongruity encourages fluid compensation, such that it elevates preference for dominant brands (study 1), green consumption (studies 2 and 4), and ethnocentric products (study 3). We isolate the causal role of anxiety using moderation tasks and biometric feedback. Furthermore, we demonstrate that compensation has an immediate dampening effect on arousal intensity. Thus, if consumers can compensate before explicitly evaluating an extremely incongruent product, their evaluations tend not to be negative. Taken together, we document that extreme innovations encourage compensation, and in compensating, consumers can become more receptive to extreme innovations.

Taylor, Nukhet, Theodore J. Noseworthy, and Ethan Pancer (2019) "Supersize My Chances: Promotional Lotteries Impact Product Size Choices," Journal of Consumer Psychology, 29(1), 77-88

Abstract: Promotional lotteries offer consumers a chance to win one of many prizes along with their purchase. Critically, as is often the case, these campaigns not only include an assortment of prizes but also an assortment of offerings that one can buy to enter the lottery—such as a small or an extra-large coffee. While companies regularly advertise that the objective odds of winning do not vary by the size of their product offerings, recent anecdotal evidence suggest that consumers behave as if it does. The net result is that consumers seem to be supersizing during promotional lotteries, and thus purchasing larger sized items. Eight studies (four core and four supplementary in Supporting information) and a single-paper meta-analysis confirm that the supersizing phenomenon is indeed real and provides evidence that this behavior is the manifestation of consumers elevating their sense of control. Specifically, supersizing serves to gain psychological control over the pursuit of a desirable, but seemingly unobtainable, outcome.

Forthcoming Publications

Taylor, Nukhet, Theodore J. Noseworthy (2025) "Future is Now: Aspirational Sized Clothing and Weight Loss," in NA-Advances in Consumer Research, 52, ed. Joseph K. Goodman, Hilke Plassmann, and Cristel Russell, Duluth, MN" Association for Consumer Research (Forthcoming)

Abstract: Clothing is a key factor in how consumers relate to their physical selves. Existing work focused on how clothing reflects consumers’ immediate desires about their bodies. We document a novel behavior tied to consumers’ long-term aspirations. We show that consumers seeking weight loss buy aspirational-sized clothes as motivational tools.