••• consumer psychology

Guilt trip? More like joy ride!

It’s not called a “guilty pleasure” for nothing; bending the rules just makes it so much better. Dieters know the feeling well when they dig into that second slice of cake. Tech junkies sense it when they spend hundreds on the latest toy. In fact, guilt is so often linked with pleasure that making people feel the slightest bit guilty amplifies whatever pleasure they subsequently indulge, according to research by Kelly Goldsmith of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University; Ravi Dhar of Yale University; and Eunice Kim Cho of the University of Toronto.
The researchers conducted a series of five experiments to determine if and how guilt increases pleasure. Four experiments tested the pleasure participants took from eating chocolate. One group of participants in each study was semantically primed to feel guilt. For priming, participants were given jumbled sentences with words meant to induce guilt or shown fitness magazines before eating the candy. The fourth study also primed participants for disgust, which, unlike guilt, did not affect their impression of the candy positively or negatively. In all four studies, participants who had been primed for guilt reported enjoying the chocolate more than the neutral group.
The fifth study explored guilty pleasures beyond food-related indulgences. Female participants were primed with sentence scrambles, shown five male online dating profiles and asked to rate how much they had enjoyed viewing the profiles. Participants in the guilt prime reported enjoying the profiles more and were more interested in dating than the neutral group.
Goldsmith warns against using guilt as a deterrent, such as trying to steer kids away from drugs and alcohol. “We don’t want to make behaviors that we’re trying to curtail more sexy and more enjoyable.”

••• demographic research

Introducing: The Pluralist Generation

With birth years starting in 1997, the Pluralist Generation is the first generation of the 21st century and will have an incomparable role in America’s history, according to Magid Generational Strategies, a Sherman Oaks, Calif., research company, and U.S. Census projections.
The first generation of the 21st century is the last generation in America that will have a Caucasian majority,” said Sharalyn Hartwell, executive director of Magid Generational Strategies. “This unprecedented transition to a multicultural, pluralistic society will be a major aspect of their lives.”
Those in the Pluralist Generation are witnessing the fragmentation, or pluralism, of our society on many other fronts as well. The Plurals’ formative years are spent watching the erosion of dominant media; the rapid emergence of fragmented and niche-based voices; growing conflicts surrounding demographic changes; and the second-longest economic decline in U.S. history. In a departure from the optimism of the Millennials, the Pluralist Generation is the least likely generation to believe in the American Dream.
Marketers looking to engage kids, tweens and teens must now understand the Pluralist. “Our culture has come to accept Millennial behaviors and attitudes as the norm for tweens and teens but those kids are no longer Millennials, they are Plurals,” said Hartwell.