Edited* by Richard E. Nisbett, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, and approved January 16, 2015 (received for review September 13, 2014)
Hunger is assumed to motivate eating, which satisfies the caloric needs underlying the motivation. However, hunger’s influence extends beyond food consumption to the acquisition of nonfood items that cannot satisfy the underlying need (e.g., binder clips), suggesting that domain-specific motives can influence behavior in unrelated domains that are irrelevant to the motive. This is likely to occur when the domain-specific response includes concepts and behaviors that can also guide decisions in other domains.
Hunger motivates people to consume food, for which finding and acquiring food is a prerequisite. We test whether the acquisition component spills over to nonfood objects: Are hungry people more likely to acquire objects that cannot satisfy their hunger? Five laboratory and field studies show that hunger increases the accessibility of acquisition-related concepts and the intention to acquire not only food but also nonfood objects. Moreover, people act on this intention and acquire more nonfood objects (e.g., binder clips) when they are hungry, both when these items are freely available and when they must be paid for. However, hunger does not influence how much they like nonfood objects. We conclude that a basic biologically based motivation can affect substantively unrelated behaviors that cannot satisfy the motivation. This presumably occurs because hunger renders acquisition-related concepts and behaviors more accessible, which influences decisions in situations to which they can be applied.
Author contributions: A.J.X., N.S., and R.S.W.J. designed research; A.J.X. performed research; A.J.X. analyzed data; and A.J.X., N.S., and R.S.W.J. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
↵*This Direct Submission article had a prearranged editor.
