The Subjective Sense of Feeling Satiated

33 Pages Posted: 10 Sep 2010 Last revised: 4 May 2012

See all articles by Joseph P. Redden

Joseph P. Redden

University of Minnesota - Twin Cities - Department of Marketing and Logistics Management

Jeff Galak

Carnegie Mellon University

Date Written: September 8, 2010

Abstract

The traditional view of satiation is that repeated consumption produces an unavoidable decline in liking according to the quantity and recency of consumption. We challenge this deterministic view by showing that satiation is instead partially constructed in the moment based on contextual cues. More specifically, while satiation is a function of the actual amount consumed, it also depends on the subjective sense of how much one has recently consumed. We demonstrate the influence of this subjective sense of satiation, and show it is driven by metacognitive cues such as the ease of retrieval of past experiences (Experiments 1 and 2), and can also be directly manipulated by providing a normative standard for consumption quantity (Experiment 3). Our research demonstrates that satiety is not driven solely by the amount and timing of past consumption, thereby establishing the role of higher-order metacognitive inferences in satiation and providing insight into how they underlie the construction of satiation.

Keywords: Satiation, Metacognition, Fluency, Hedonic Consumption

Suggested Citation

Redden, Joseph P. and Galak, Jeff, The Subjective Sense of Feeling Satiated (September 8, 2010). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1673993 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1673993

Joseph P. Redden

University of Minnesota - Twin Cities - Department of Marketing and Logistics Management ( email )

271 19th Avenue South
Room 1235 Mgt. Econ. Building
Minneapolis, MN 55455
United States

Jeff Galak (Contact Author)

Carnegie Mellon University ( email )

Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890
United States
412-268-5810 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://www.jeffgalak.com