Not Hungry? How about the "Ladies' Cut" Steak?

Can the label used to describe the size of a steak dramatically influence your willingness to order it at a restaurant? Are we so affected by these labels that we won't buy a product just because of how its size is described? Seems ludicrous, right? But a ton of research on "reference group influence" has shown that we go out of our way to identify with certain groups and dissociate ourselves with other groups.

But in a study recently published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, authors Katherine White and Darren Dahl wanted to see whether our desire to avoid associating with certain groups can be used to manipulate our choices. Their experiment was simple. Subjects were asked to look at a menu and pick an item to eat. They were told they were in the mood for steak, but not too hungry. The menu they were given had a 12oz steak and a 10oz steak. The 12oz steak was always referred to as the "House Cut." However, for the 10oz, half the subjects saw it labeled as "Chef's Cut" and the other half saw it labeled as "Ladies' Cut." Just this labeling had a huge effect on men. When the 10 oz was called the "Chef's Cut," 47% chose this and 53% chose the 12 oz. However, when it was labeled "Ladies' Cut," only 5.3% chose the 10oz and 94.7% chose the larger "House Cut." If you are a restaurateur, here's an easy way to move people to a larger and more expensive item on your menu. For women, of course, the "ladies' cut" label had no effect on choice. Interestingly, men also rated the 12oz steak significantly more favorably than the 10oz steak in the "ladies' cut" condition, but not in the "chef's cut" condition. This effect was dramatically reduced when subjects in a follow-up experiment were told they would be having the dinner they ordered alone in their room. Thus, it was the concern for what other people would think (if a man ordered the "ladies' cut") that drove their choices.

Isn't it fascinating how just the label given to an item can so strongly affect our choices? It becomes particularly worrying when we consider how this tendency can be used to manipulate our choices. The use of reference groups in advertising (the cool people all use the product) is an application of this effect. A third study showed the effect of "ladies' cut" on men's choices was reduced for men who had low levels of "public self-consciousness." Perhaps the way to reduce obesity is to label all servings over a certain size the "Fat Man Meal" or something like that. Or, maybe if we were all a little less concerned about what other people think, we'd be less susceptible to such manipulation.

Are You Always in the Slow Lane?

Part of the reason I am so intrigued by consumer psychology is that I see its effects first-hand on my behavior. I am more susceptible to these influences than most. We are constantly affected by how we process information and how we use what is readily available and fail to account for unavailable information when we make our choices. That sounds rather vague.

Have you ever felt that the grocery store line you join always seems to slow down. Why is it, that the moment you join a line, the other lines start moving faster while you get caught in the one line with a price check?

First, try this card trick out and see if you can figure out how it's done. If you tell me you figured it out immediately, you're either very smart, a psychologist, or a liar. Do you see how this card trick relates to your grocery store experience? Well, the underlying psychological process is the same. We tend to remember certain parts of an experience and forget others. When we later make a decision, we tend to "overweight" the remembered information. So, when you think of all your grocery store lines, you just happen to remember all the times you got stuck in a line and forget all the other times you sailed right through. So, it appears to you that you're always in a slow line. An empirical evaluation of all your grocery store line experiences will show that you often don't get stuck in the slow lane. Now can you figure out the card trick? What do you focus on and what information do you ignore?

This problem of selectively remembering only "special" or salient events can affect everything from business decision making to personal relationships. You may start to feel your spouse is always cutting you down in public, or that he never puts the toilet seat down. This frustrates the spouse because as far as he remembers, he always puts the seat down ... you get my drift. Of course, there are many more significant implications to this basic psychological process, but this is good enough for one post.