Reducing Satiation: The Role of Categorization Level

People usually like experiences less as they repeat them: they satiate. This re-search finds that people satiate less if they categorize the consumption episodes at lower levels. For instance, as people ate more jelly beans, their enjoyment declined less quickly when the candy was categorized specifically (e.g., cherry, orange) rather than generally (e.g., jelly bean). Three studies demonstrate this “specificity effect ” for people’s ratings of enjoyment both during and immediately after consumption. Process evidence shows that subcategorization focuses peo-ple’s attention on differentiating aspects, making the episodes seem less repetitive and consequently less satiating. Good things satiate (Coombs and Avrunin 1977). Thesethree words describe a common barrier to happiness, namely, that pleasure often declines with greater consump-tion. Satiation causes our favorites to lose their special status, makes it hard to follow a diet, and pushes us to escalate our spending on increasingly expensive products. Life has even been compared to an unending “hedonic tread