Naturalness judgments by lay Americans: Process dominates content in judgments of food or water acceptability and naturalness

By P. Rozin. Judgment and Decision Making, 2006

129 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study directly tests the hypothesis that, at least within the domains of food and drink for Americans, the judgment of naturalness has more to do with the history of an object, that is the processes that it has undergone, as opposed to its material content. Individuals rate the naturalness and acceptability of a natural entity (water or tomato paste), that same entity with a first transformation in which a natural substance is added (or some part removed), and then a second transformation in which the natural additive is removed (or the removed part is replaced). The twice transformed entity is stipulated to be identical to the original natural entity, yet it is rated much less natural and less acceptable. It differs from the original entity only in its history (the reversed processes it has experienced). The twice transformed entity is also rated as less natural than the once-transformed entity, even though the former is identical to the original natural entity, and the latter is not. Therefore, naturalness depends heavily on the process-history of an entity.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Sensory Systems

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ff86a8aaa1a1b54e19c00f17e2d0a40a849d6d7e

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Citations in the corpus

Making sense of the "clean label" trends: A review of consumer food choice behavior and discussion of industry implications. (2017, background): “Despite this growing spread of food products claimed to be “natural”, the naturalness of a food product is still a rather vague concept, quite difficult to define properly (Rozin, 2006; Siipi, 2013).”
The importance of food naturalness for consumers: Results of a systematic review (2017, background): “In several studies, Rozin and colleagues have examined the meaning of the highly desirable food attribute of naturalness (Rozin, 2005, 2006; Rozin et al., 2004, 2012).”