Organizational Behavior, School of Management and Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014 Mar 11;111(10):3705-8. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1313637111. Epub 2014 Feb 24.
Contagion is a form of magical thinking in which people believe that a person's immaterial qualities or essence can be transferred to an object through physical contact. Here we investigate how a belief in contagion influences the sale of celebrity memorabilia. Using data from three high-profile estate auctions, we find that people's expectations about the amount of physical contact between the object and the celebrity positively predicts the final bids for items that belonged to well-liked individuals (e.g., John F. Kennedy) and negatively predicts final bids for items that belonged to disliked individuals (e.g., Bernard Madoff). A follow-up experiment further suggests that these effects are driven by contagion beliefs: when asked to bid on a sweater owned by a well-liked celebrity, participants report that they would pay substantially less if it was sterilized before they received it. However, sterilization increases the amount they would pay for a sweater owned by a disliked celebrity. These studies suggest that magical thinking may still have effects in contemporary Western societies and they provide some unique demonstrations of contagion effects on real-world purchase decisions.
传染病是一种神奇的思维形式，人们认为一个人的非物质品质或本质可以通过身体接触转移到一个物体上。在这里，我们研究了传染病的信念如何影响名人纪念品的销售。我们使用来自三个知名房地产拍卖的数据集，发现人们对物品与名人之间身体接触量的预期正向预测了属于受欢迎的个人（例如，约翰·F·肯尼迪）的物品的最终出价，而负向预测了属于不受欢迎的个人（例如，伯纳德·麦道夫）的物品的最终出价。一项后续实验进一步表明，这些影响是由传染病的信念驱动的：当被要求对一件属于受欢迎的名人的毛衣出价时，参与者表示，如果在收到毛衣之前对其进行消毒，他们会支付少得多的钱。然而，消毒会增加他们为一件属于不受欢迎的名人的毛衣支付的金额。这些研究表明，神奇的思维在当代西方社会可能仍然有影响，并且它们为传染病对现实世界购买决策的影响提供了一些独特的例证。
