The Effect of Pursuing Self-Regulatory Goals on Variety Seeking

Abstract Pursuing a self-regulatory goal, such as weight loss, motivates consumers to forego pleasure seeking, typically by selecting virtue over vice. We propose that in the absence of virtuous options, consumers with a self-regulatory goal will instead choose less variety in choice sets of exclusively vice options because the extra pleasure that variety affords seems incompatible with the goal. We find converging evidence for the decrease in variety seeking in vice categories across five studies (and three supplementary studies in the web appendix, N = 6,066), using both scenario-based and actual consumption contexts. We also demonstrate the underlying process: consumers are motivated to curtail pleasure seeking when pursuing a weight-loss goal and that leads them to choose less variety in vice categories when there is no virtue alternative available.