EMBODIED COGNITION AND SENSORY MARKETING

Catching (Up with) Magical Contagion: A Reviewof Contagion Effects in Consumer Contexts

JULIE Y. HUANG, JOSHUA M. ACKERMAN, AND GEORGE E. NEWMAN

ABSTRACT Over 20 years have passed since magical contagion was first introduced to psychology; we discuss how

psychological and consumer behavior findings since then have deepened our understanding of this phenomenon. Re-

cent research has shed light on the psychological mechanisms that underlie consumers’ contamination concerns (e.g.,

the behavioral immune system, disgust), confirming that people’s germ-related intuitions affect a wide variety of con-

sumer judgments in areas that are only indirectly linked to disease-related threats (used products, [un]]familiar prod-

ucts, products contacting each other). Moreover, recent findings have also documented the ways that nonphysical es-

sences might transfer from people to objects (celebrity products; positive consumer contagion). This recent body of

work extends contagion research by demonstrating that physical contact is not a prerequisite for essence transfer

and that the types of essences that are contagious are broader than originally conceived. We close by discussing future

research into how magical contagion affects consumer and firm decision making.

The concept of contagion was first articulated by an-thropologists in the late nineteenth century to de-scribe a set of cultural practices related to the trans-

fer of unseen properties (Frazer 1890/1959; Mauss 1902/1972). In particular, people across several different cul-tures seemed to hold the belief that objects could acquirethe aura or “essence” of a particular source through phys-ical contact with that source (Rozin, Millman, and Nemer-off 1986).

The seminal research of Paul Rozin, Carol Nemeroff, andcolleagues (e.g., Rozin et al. 1986, 1989; Rozin and Nemer-off 1990; Nemeroff and Rozin 1994) is arguably respon-sible for importing concepts about this transfer, or “conta-gion,” into the behavioral sciences, in particular social andcognitive psychology. Over 20 years have passed since thisinitial flurry of research was conducted. Since then, workon contagion has surged.

In particular, a growing body of research within psychol-ogy and consumer behavior (e.g., Rozin et al. 1986, 1989,2007; Argo, Dahl, and Morales 2006, 2008; Hood et al.2011; Kim and Kim 2011; Newman, Diesendruck, and Bloom2011; Gjersoe et al. 2014; Newman and Dhar 2014; Smith,Newman, and Dhar 2015; Stavrova et al. 2016) has demon-strated that contagion beliefs influence modern day behav-

Julie Y. Huang is an assistant professor at the College of Business, Stony Brook Uof Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. George E. Newman is an ass

JACR, volume 2, number 4. Published online September 26, 2017. http://dx.do© 2017 the Association for Consumer Research. All rights reserved. 2378-1815

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ior that can be observed in actual market contexts (New-man and Bloom 2014). For instance, contagion has beenused to explain behaviors across many different domains,including the valuation of consumer products (Argo et al.2006, 2008; Morales and Fitzsimons 2007; Newman andDhar 2014), celebrity possessions (Newman et al. 2011;Newman and Bloom 2014), the choice of organ transplantdonors (Hood et al. 2011; Meyer et al. 2013), preferencesfor sacred land (Rozin and Wolf 2008), the valuation oforiginal artworks (Newman and Bloom 2012), cross-culturaldifferences in collecting behavior (Gjersoe et al. 2014),gambling decisions (Wohl and Enzle 2002; Mishra, Mishra,and Nayakankuppam 2009), ability and performance (Leeet al. 2011; Kramer and Block 2014), and even romanticrelationships (Niemyjska 2014).

Given these recent advances, we believe it is an oppor-tune time to revisit research on contagion processes in lightof what these new approaches have discovered and theircontribution to consumer psychology. We begin by brieflyreviewing earlier work by Rozin and colleagues, which pro-vided useful frameworks to identify contagion beliefs. Wethen summarize advances in consumer behavior since then,specifying when and how such developments support orexpand original conceptualizations of contagion effects. Fi-

niversity. Joshua M. Ackerman is an associate professor at the Departmentociate professor at the School of Management, Yale University.

i.org/10.1086/693533/2017/0204-0050$10.00

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1. Earlier work on contagion also distinguished between forward con-tagion versus backward contagion. With forward contagion, an essence (ei-ther contained in a medium or transferred directly by the source) influ-ences a recipient; in backward contagion, acting on an essence that hasbeen imparted in a medium has the power to act back on its original source(as when one enacts harm on a voodoo doll in order to cause harm to theperson represented by the doll; Rozin et al. 1989; Rozin and Nemeroff1990). Since the majority of research conducted in consumer behaviorhas focused on instances of forward contagion (cf. Kramer and Block2011), this article does not further address this issue.

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nally, we propose future research directions that extend ourunderstanding of magical contagion, focusing on the impli-cations for consumers and products alike.

MAGICAL CONTAGION: A LITTLE CONTACT

GOES A LONG WAY

Part of a larger conceptual framework known as the “laws ofsympathetic magic” (Frazer 1890/1959), the law of conta-gion holds that “people, objects, and so forth that come intocontact with each other may influence each other throughthe transfer of some or all of their properties” (Nemeroffand Rozin 1994, 159). This law describes the notion that ob-jects may acquire unseen characteristics including a “soul”or “essence” of an entity through physical contact (Frazer1890/1959; Mauss 1902/1972; Rozin et al. 1986). For ex-ample, Frazer discusses populations in New Guinea whereindividuals believe “everything with which a man comesin contact retains something of his soul-stuff” (1890/1959, 68; Nemeroff and Rozin 1994).

Contagion beliefs are thought to be conceptual analoguesto, and perhaps derived from, an understanding of howpathogenic and parasitic agents infect the body throughcontact (Rozin and Nemeroff 1990, 2002; Nemeroff andRozin 1994). Such conceptual systems that track the spreadof disease contaminants extend to the judgment of physicaltraces andmoral essences which originate from specific peo-ple (e.g., Nemeroff and Rozin 1994). Phenomena attributedto the law of contagion are characterized by a number ofspecific features, including permanence, holographic prop-erties, and dose insensitivity (see Rozin and Nemeroff [1990,2002] for a review). Specifically, permanence indicates thata direct physical encounter with a source or a contaminatedobject—however brief—is sufficient enough to result inlong-term transfer of properties from a source to a recipient(colloquially described as “once in contact, always in con-tact”; Rozin et al. 1986). The holographic principle, or “thepart equals the whole,” suggests that even a small amountof an essence contains all or most of the characteristics ofits source (e.g., a lock of hair contains the essential natureof person; Rozin and Nemeroff 1990, 219). Finally, dose in-sensitivity (also known as dose independence) suggests thatessence transmission does not require a large amount of con-tamination (Rozin and Nemeroff 1990). Indeed, even smallquantities of negative residue are capable of producing com-paratively large effects on the object or person touched, aswhen brief contact with a roach spoils a glass of juice (Rozinet al. 1986) or contact with a small fly effectively ruins anentire plate of food.

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Early findings in the contagion literature establishedthe breadth and ubiquity of contagion-related beliefs.1 Forexample, people reported wanting to avoid touching previ-ously neutral items if they were contacted by a range of neg-ative sources, including “disliked” peers (Rozin et al. 1986,1989) and individuals for whom they held negative impres-sions (“unsavory character, bum, or streetperson”; Rozinet al. 1989). Conversely, participants showed a preferencefor items that had contacted positive sources, like closefriends, lovers, or people to whom they were most sexuallyattracted (Rozin et al. 1986, 1989; Nemeroff and Rozin1994). Taken together, these phenomena suggested that ob-jects can be meaningfully understood as having a contacthistory, and that this history has potential implications forothers who evaluate or come into contact with them.

It is important to note that much of the early work estab-lishing magical contagion appears to emphasize the phys-icality of contagion effects. According to earlier concep-tualizations of contagion, the most “contagious” objects areactual physical remnants of a person, such as clippings ofhair, fingernails, or umbilical cords, but such beliefs alsoextend to inanimate objects, such as possessions. As Rozinand Nemeroff (1990) write, “Essence has a number of char-acteristics that suggest that it is a physical substance.Most critically, it is passed on by physical contact” (210),thereby stressing the quasi-physical properties common tomany contagious substances, including their transferabilityfrom source to object. Similarly, initial demonstrations ofcontagion beliefs relied heavily on people’s intuitions regard-ing the prospect of physical contact with contaminated ob-jects. In a prototypical study (e.g., Rozin et al. 1986, 1989;Nemeroff and Rozin 1994), participants would rate theirwillingness to contact a neutral object (e.g., sweater; hair-brush) on a scale anchored by 2100 (“the most unpleasantthing you can imagine”) to1100 (“the most pleasant thingyou can imagine”). Using the same scale, participants thenre-rated the object, this time imagining that it had been con-tacted by various sources. These ratings where then com-

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432 Catching (Up with) Magical Contagion Huang, Ackerman, and Newman

pared to the initial ratings as an index of whether conta-gion effects were operating to increase or decrease partic-ipants’ inclinations to interact with the objects.

Despite the emphasis on the presumed physicality of thecontagious essence, researchers identified a number of non-corporeal essences that were transmissible through physicalcontact. Specifically, essences could be of an “interpersonal-moral” nature (containing “some nonmaterial essence ofthe source,” “akin to ‘vibes,’ ” “personal energy,” or “soul-stuff”), or they could be meaningfully identified as havinga physical substance (microbial or “dependent on sensible,perceptible residues”; Nemeroff and Rozin 1994). In gen-eral, cleansing actions were believed to be most effectiveat negating contamination by physical essences, while sym-bolic activities (e.g., “canceling out” negative contaminationon an object by exposing it to the essence of a positivelyvalenced source) were believed to be more successful forinterpersonal-moral substances. (Note, however, that evenin these earlier publications, Nemerfoff and Rozin [1994]observe the many similarities between these physical andinterpersonal-moral dimensions and the “blurry” bound-aries between.) Based on this work, Rozin and colleaguesargued for the pervasiveness of contagion effects in modern-day contexts. Their initial insights set the stage for a deeperand more precise understanding of the psychology of con-tagion and, in so doing, helped to orient an abstract andseemingly associative process (e.g., avoiding a serial killer’ssweater) as a derivation of a more concrete and biologicalprocess (germ-relevant contagion).

Since then, interest in contagion effects has surged, par-ticularly in studies of consumer behavior. Moreover, a newarea of psychological research has developed, recastinggerm-relevant processes as a suite of biological defensestrategies, which has implications for our understandingof contagion effects. Consequently, we conduct a broad re-view of the consumer behavior and psychological researchwhich has been conducted since foundational work onmagical contagion. Starting from the conceptual frame-work offered by Rozin and colleagues (e.g., Nemeroff andRozin 1994), we organize recent research into physicaland interpersonal-moral dimensions and focus on advance-ments that have the potential to expand the field’s under-standing of contagion processes.

CATCHING UP WITH CONTAGION

Recent research has shed light on the psychological mecha-nisms which drive people to be concerned with contagioussubstances in the first place. Specifically, these findings con-

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firm that people’s intuitions about physical, transmissibleessences underlie a wide variety of consumer judgments,even in areas which are only indirectly linked to disease-related threats. Moreover, recent research shows that non-physical contagion effects exert unique and important in-fluences, even in actual market contexts. We map wherethese phenomena are consistent with earlier conceptuali-zation of contagion effects. Additionally, we observe thatthese findings address features of contagion that were notspecifically addressed by earliermodels—namely, that phys-ical contact is not a prerequisite for essence transfer, andthat an increasingly broad variety of essences have beenfound to transfer. In the next sections, we discuss researchfocusing both on physical and nonphysical models of con-tagion.

Developments regarding Physical Models of ContagionAdvances in understanding processes relevant to physicalcontagion have been made within two fields—consumer be-havior and evolutionary psychology. Both approaches positforms of contagion with similar mechanistic properties.These include the importance of physical contact for trans-ferring essences and a central role of disgust as a mediatingemotion. However, there are key differences in the typesof processes and outcomes investigated. The consumer ap-proach has tended to focus on outcomes related to val-uation and choice, whereas an evolutionary approach hastended to focus on cues relevant to actual contaminants(i.e., germs) and on outcomes that range from direct avoid-ance to stereotype activation to changes in social percep-tion.

Consumer Behavior Literature. In the consumer litera-ture, contagion is typically considered in terms of its rele-vance for manager and marketer decision making and thefactors that predict consumer reactions to product of-ferings. A common finding is that consumers devalue prod-ucts that have been “contaminated” through touch withdisgust-eliciting agents, an effect that becomes strongerthe more direct and intimate the contact is presumed tobe between product and consumer. For instance, contagioneffects have been shown to play a role in people’s willing-ness to pay less for used products compared to new ones(O’Reilly et al. 1984; Rozin, Markwith, and McCauley 1994).This secondhand aversion can occur because of contact be-tween a consumer and a product, leading a second con-sumer to treat the product as though it has been negativelyaltered. Supporting this idea, Argo and colleagues (2006)

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Volume 2 Number 4 2017 433

found that shoppers rated clothing that had been tried onby other shoppers as worse than clothing on the regularstore rack, and they were less likely to buy previously wornbut new clothing. This “consumer contamination” effectwas stronger when the other shoppers had interacted withthe product more extensively and within a shorter timeframe from when raters judged the product. Consistentwith the belief that some physical essence had been trans-ferred through contact, this effect was mediated by the dis-gust that raters felt toward the product. Indirect indicatorsof prior contact, including disorganized shelves, may elicitsimilar reactions (Castro, Morales, and Nowlis 2013).

A related finding highlighted the relatively intangiblenature of this essence. In one set of studies (Morales andFitzsimons 2007), participants viewed shopping carts con-taining a target product that was either touching or nottouching a different, disgust-associated product (e.g., a boxof cookies resting against a box of tampons). When theproducts were touching, participants rated the cookies asworse (even at the attribute level) and were less willing totaste them. This result was also driven by disgust reactions.Given the design of these studies, no cross-product contam-ination was possible, highlighting the intangibility of thecontagious essences to which people were responding.

Evolutionary Psychology Literature. The original work onmagical contagion framed it as stemming from a functional“defense against microbial contamination” (Nemeroff andRozin 1994, 61). From an evolutionary perspective, manag-ing pathogenic and parasitic threats has been a central se-lection pressure over the course of human evolution (Ack-erman, Huang, and Bargh 2012). Contagion beliefs mayfacilitate adaptive responding to vectors of infectious dis-ease by promoting treatment or avoidance of potentialsources of infection. Since magical contagion was first in-troduced to the psychological literature, an emerging modelof psychological disease management has indicated thathumans have evolved not only a sophisticated physiologi-cal immune system to combat the threat of pathogens, butalso an additional suite of responses that help to preventpathogenic threats from first entering the body.

This “behavioral immune system” is composed of psy-chological and behavioral processes that use sensorimotorinputs to facilitate infection avoidance (Schaller and Park2011; Murray and Schaller 2016). The system has a numberof unique features, including functional flexibility (the ten-dency for greater responding to occur in situations of highpathogen threat and for people chronically averse to germs)

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and an overperception bias (the tendency to treat certaininnocuous features as cues to pathogen threat). This modelcontributes to the work on contagion beliefs by identifyingspecific types of physical and behavioral features likely tobe seen as dangerous and by strongly emphasizing the phys-ical nature of contaminating essences (germs) and the ac-tions people might take to weaken these essences.

Some of the most famous visual cues associated withpathogen threat and aversion include signs of food spoilageand other disgust-relevant characteristics (e.g., Rozin et al.1986; Curtis et al. 2004; Vogt et al. 2011; van Hooff et al.2013), but many infectious diseases are also accompaniedby visibly anomalous physical features that elicit disgust,including “markers, lesions, discoloration of body parts . . .and behavioral anomalies” (Kurzban and Leary 2001, 198).Notably, however, microbes are themselves invisible to theeye and can result in a virtually unlimited set of outcomesupon infection. An evolved threat management system de-veloped a way of minimizing the potential costs associatedwith pathogenic infection, and one way of doing so was toencourage individuals to perceive a wide array of anomalousfeatures (even harmless ones) as dangerous. Indeed, behav-ioral immune research indicates that people respond to fea-tures like birthmarks as though they signaled infectionthreat (Ackerman et al. 2009). The same is true for otherinterpersonal features such as abnormalities, old age, obe-sity, foreignness, mental illness, homosexual orientation,and physical attractiveness (e.g., Faulkner et al. 2004; Inbaret al. 2009; Huang et al. 2011; Park, van Leeuwen, and Ste-phen 2012; Lund and Miller 2014; Wang, Michalak, andAckerman, forthcoming).

The difficulty inherent in verifying disease agents mayhave contributed to the distorted perceptions of risk regard-ing the spread of negative essences found in the contagionliterature. One consequence of this overreaction can be seenin the “dose independent” (Rozin and Nemeroff 1990) na-ture of classical contagion effects. Small amounts of neg-ative residue are believed to produce comparatively largeeffects on the object or person that they touch—as whena plate of food is contaminated by “touching” dog fecesvia a long piece of thread (Rozin et al. 1986). Relatedly, par-ticipants in one study perceived that relatively small, low-calorie amounts of unhealthy snacks (e.g., bacon or candy)would produce much greater weight gain than larger, high-calorie amounts of healthy snacks (e.g., cottage cheese withcarrots and pears; Oakes and Slotterback 2005). Althoughthe unhealthy snack study is different from the “tainted”food studies in a number of respects, it is possible that con-

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434 Catching (Up with) Magical Contagion Huang, Ackerman, and Newman

sumers’ reactions are traceable to lay beliefs about contami-nation, as failures to manage these threats would have in-flicted high costs on ancestral people.

In sum, when individuals are chronically concerned withpathogens or situational cues suggest a heightened threatof pathogens, people begin acting in ways that help mini-mize their infection risk, even when the targets of their be-haviors are not true hazards. These threats also need notbe explicitly linked to targets of evaluation. Environmentalcues to infectious disease can carryover onto decisions thatconsumers make in a variety of domains, including foodpreferences (Li et al. 2017), risky decision making (Pro-kosch, Ackerman, and Hill 2017), community-level dispa-rities in used merchandise sales (Huang, Ackerman, andSedlovskaya, forthcoming), and openness to innovative prod-uct design (Huang, Ackerman, andWilliams 2017). For exam-ple, Huang and colleagues (2017) showed that people devaluesecondhand products more when an online banner adver-tisement indicated the presence of flu season.

Such findings are consistent with work in the magicalcontagion literature that emphasizes touch as a means oftransferring essences (Rozin et al. 1989; Nemeroff andRozin 1994). Given the intimate relationship between dis-gust and physical avoidance (and thus successfully evadingparasitic or pathogen transmission), this makes sense. Othertactile properties that elicit disgust (e.g., mushiness, sticki-ness, and sliminess) also correlate strongly with moist, warmconditions where pathogenic substances thrive (Curtis andBiran 2001; Curtis et al. 2004; Oum, Lieberman, and Aylward2011); we note that people appear to react with strong re-vulsion when touching the types of organic matter thatspread easily upon contact (blood, pus, fecal matter) andare most likely to remain on their bodies. Research indi-cates that such reactionsdevelop over timebutmaybepres-ent at a very early age. Even 18-month-old infants avoidfoods that have been in contact with another disliked food(Brown and Harris 2012; Brown et al. 2012), and the urgeto avoid food that has been contaminated by anotherperson licking or sneezing on it has been demonstratedin 5-year-old children but not younger (DeJesus, Shutts,and Kinzler 2015), which suggests that children’s sensitiv-ity to contact may increase with age. Presumably, theseearly concerns draw on adaptive, potentially innate, cogni-tive systems that subsequently bloom into the more ma-ture manifestations of contagion concerns that we have re-viewed here.

Finally, the relevance of tactile sensation and disgustfor physical contagion can help to inform interventions in-

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tended to ameliorate the consequences of contagion. Forexample, feelings of disgust can promote increased washingbehavior (Porzig-Drummond et al. 2009) and acts of handwashing can interrupt downstream effects of pathogen con-cerns such as risk aversion and prejudice expression (e.g.,Huang et al. 2011, 2017; Prokosch et al. 2017). Magical con-tagion studies have shown that interventions that addressmaterial substances (e.g., washing, laundering, purifying)are also capable of removing at least some nonphysicaltraces of its previous user (Argo et al. 2008; Newman andBloom 2014). Moreover, people perceive that even cold, hardcash contains the essence of its rightful owner, but sub-sequently wiping the currency clean (a physically based in-tervention) diminishes its intuitive link with its owner(Uhlmann and Zhu 2013).

This work has direct implications for consumer choice.Engaging in physical cleansing behavior reduces decision bi-ases including the endowment effect (Florak et al. 2014) andcognitive dissonance (Lee and Schwarz 2010a), the feelingof good or bad luck following decision outcomes (Xu, Zwick,and Schwarz 2011), and guilt from past decisions (Zhongand Liljenquist 2006). It appears that even the way in whichchoices are made (morally relevant choices in particular) candifferentially affect the desirability of products. For in-stance, telling a lie orally makes mouthwash seemmore pos-itive, whereas writing a lie makes hand sanitizer seem morepositive (Lee and Schwarz 2010b). It is notmuch of a stretchto infer that similar effects might emerge in contexts whereconsumers make decisions about products that conflict withtheir long-term goals or self-image (e.g., choosing to pur-chase indulgent foods while on a diet).

This research in consumer behavior and evolutionarypsychology offers insights into the processes underlyingmagical contagion effects. While these separate fields mayhave approached the underlying mechanisms of contagionfrom different angles, they both appear to rely on a germ-based model, and they both extend the argument aboutphysical essences and transfer highlighted in early conta-gion work (Rozin and Nemeroff 1990).

Developments regarding Interpersonal-MoralContagion ProcessesOver the past two decades, consumer behavior research hassteadily documented how nonphysical essences are believedto transfer from a particular source to an object or person.For example, contagion effects “not carried by a living in-visible entity” nor “dependent on sensible, perceptible resi-dues” (Nemeroff and Rozin 1994, 172) have been shown

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Volume 2 Number 4 2017 435

to drive consumer behavior across diverse domains includ-ing gambling contexts (Mishra 2009; Mishra et al. 2009),purchasing decisions (Argo et al. 2008), and auctions (New-man and Bloom 2014). These effects are concentrated onprocesses with interpersonal and moral implications, thusthe name of this contagion dimension. Further, unlike con-tagion effects associated with the concept of disease con-taminants, this research indicates that both negative andpositive outcomes can result from essence transfer. In thissection, we focus on recent empirical research that (1) high-lights a strong effect of positive contagion, (2) showcasesthe diversity of interpersonal-moral essences, thereby broad-ening and deepening our understanding of contagion-related processes.

Much Greater Effect of “Positive” Contagion than Ini-tially Anticipated/Observed. Whereas the earlier work onmagical contagion observed that negative contagion appearsto be “both more common and more salient” than analogouspositive effects (Rozin et al. 1989, 209; see also Rozin et al.1986; Nemeroff and Rozin 1994), recent research suggestsa robust and consequential effect of positive contagion. Forexample, in a retail context, individuals are more likely topurchase a tee-shirt if it was tried on by an attractive con-federate of the opposite sex (Argo et al. 2008). Celebrity pos-sessions increase in value if they were physically touched bythose individuals (Newman et al. 2011; Newman and Bloom2014). And, in a gambling context, people preferentially beton objects that are in close physical proximity to previously“lucky” objects (Mishra et al. 2009).

Such findings reinforce not only the unexpected perva-siveness of positive contamination; in so doing, they alsohighlight intriguing differences between positive contagionand negative contagion. Cases of positive contagion (wheremundane objects increase dramatically in value if touchedby well-regarded sources) are not easily explained by tradi-tional accounts of contagion effects stemming from intui-tions about microbial contamination. For example, in casesof positive contagion, observers do not feel visceral disgusttoward the source, but rather attraction, liking, and admi-ration (Newman et al. 2011; Marchak and Hall 2017).And conceptually, positive characteristics (e.g., healthful-ness of a substance) have little means of “infecting” objectsin the way that toxins or diseases might.

Instead, the transmission of positive essences may bedriven by different processes from those involved in thespread of negative contaminants. Research suggests that in-stances of positive contagion appear to be primarily driven

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by beliefs about the transfer of essence, rather than feel-ings of disgust (e.g., Argo et al. 2008; Newman and Bloom2012). For example, disgust arguably plays no role in stud-ies that show that consumers’ perceptions of their ownathletic abilities increase if they briefly touch a ball whichwas presumably once in contact with a star athlete (Kramerand Block 2014). Similarly, when amateur athletes performbetter at a golf exercise if they use a golf club that they believewas once owned by a professional putter (Lee et al. 2011),presumably the contagion effects are driven not by negativeattitudes toward the object or source but rather by the beliefthat some desired ability of the source has been transmittedand can subsequently be acquired by the new user.

More and more, the literature is accruing evidence whereinpositive properties spread from a source to a target object,rendering that object more valuable in some way in the ab-sence of negative mechanisms like disgust. For example, con-sumers are more willing to purchase a sweater if it has beenworn by an attractive person of the opposite gender due togeneral attraction to the previous wearer, not disgust (Argoet al. 2008).

Moreover, instances of positive contamination appearto bemore dose sensitive compared to cases of negative con-tagion, such that increases in the amount of contact be-tween a valued source and a target object translate into in-creases in perceived value. Items at auction (e.g., a pen) thatare perceived to have had more contact with a well-regardedcelebrity (e.g., John F. Kennedy) sell for more money thansimilarly priced items that are perceived to have less con-tact. Importantly, this effect was much stronger for well-regarded celebrities compared to negatively viewed celebri-ties (e.g., Bernie Madoff; or put another way, the influenceis more “dose dependent”; Newman and Bloom 2014). Whileinitial studies observed a similar “asymmetry” in influence(Rozin et al. 1986; Nemeroff and Rozin 1994), we note thatit is the more recent findings that directly address the spec-ificity of positive contagion effects (e.g., the ways in whichthey differ from negative contagion effects).

Many Different Types of Essences That Transfer (NotJust Moral Qualities). While the original contagion find-ings focused on the influence of essences that were relatedto disease, bodily traces, or moral qualities (e.g., Rozin andNemeroff 1990; Nemeroff and Rozin 1994), recent inquirieshave increasingly found that a surprising variety of inter-personal essences can transfer via contact. Eskine et al.(2013) found that direct and indirect physical contact witha moral transgressor leads participants to feel contaminated

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436 Catching (Up with) Magical Contagion Huang, Ackerman, and Newman

by the transgressor’s immoral nature, such that they sub-sequently feel more guilty. However, even nonmoral quali-ties of a person, such as perceived traits and abilities, havebeen shown to transfer. As mentioned earlier, perceived es-sence transfer can affect participants’ athletic self-confidence(Kramer and Block 2014) and performance (Lee et al. 2011).Similarly, participants’ intuitions about luck can be influ-enced by contagion processes (Mishra et al. 2009). This workmakes a case for redefining contagion involving nonphys-ical essences along broader dimensions than the moral orinterpersonal.

Further, even very ineffable qualities, such as emotions,the essence of a luxury brand, or the authentic spirit of anartist, have been found to psychologically transfer. Researchsuggests that across cultures, people infer that strong emo-tions can rub off on physical spaces, leaving an emotionalresidue that new people in those places can contract, therebyinfluencing the decisions that they make (Savani et al. 2011).Luxury products that are manufactured in a company’s long-standing factory are perceived as retaining the “essence of thebrand” and thus valuedmore (Newman and Dhar 2014). Sim-ilarly, individuals tend to value an artwork more if its crea-tion involved physical contact with the artist than if it wascreated using a hands-off procedure because handled artworkwas perceived to contain more of the “spirit” or authentic es-sence of the artist (Newman and Bloom 2012).

Many Different Means of Transfer (Not Just PhysicalContact). In addition to increasing the catalog of essencesthat can transfer, recent research has also examined howthese essences transfer. While Nemeroff and Rozin’s origi-nal contagion model arguably relied upon perceptions thatphysical contact has occurred between source and object, re-cent research suggests that physical contact is not a prereq-uisite for transfer of interpersonal-moral essences. In oneexample of contact-free contagion, participants were averseto contact with people or objects who had simply been in thephysical vicinity of (but not touching) a contaminatingsource (Kim and Kim 2011). Similarly, as described earlier,emotional residue can be perceived to exist within a generalspace, and transfer by entering that space, without obviousdirect contact (Savani et al. 2011).

Other forms of proximity to sources also appear to trig-ger contagion beliefs. The phenomenon of ‘intention-basedcontagion’ describes how the simple act of creation has beenshown to imbue an object with a person’s essence (Stavrovaet al. 2016). For example, consumers prefer commemora-tive or artistic items with earlier serial numbers such as

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an Andy Warhol print with a serial number of no. 3/10,000compared to a serial number of no. 6,532/10,000. This oc-curs because earlier numbers are perceived as being tempo-rally “closer” to the creator (Smith et al. 2015). Importantly,consumers’ increased preferences for earlier creations holdeven when controlling for the extent to which the creatorphysically contacted the object. Moreover, if an inventoris described as immoral, participants perceive his or her in-ventions as similarly immoral—even if the inventor nevertouched the object (and even if the object itself is nonphys-ical, such as a piece of music; Stavrova et al. 2016), reinforc-ing the notion that interpersonal-moral contagion can occurthrough pathways operating independently from physicalcontact.

Note, however, that the nascent research into intention-based contagion suggests that boundary conditions exist towhat types of essences can transfer through non–contact-based pathways. While studies suggest that the essence ofa luxury brand can transfer via contact with factory source(Newman and Dhar 2014), other companies or brands maynot have a strong essence to be transferred in the first place.For example, participants of one study valued jackets withearlier serial numbers if they weremade by an individual de-signer (Alexander Wang) but not if they had been made by abranded company (H&M; Smith et al. 2015).

Additional boundary conditions to non–contact-based es-sence transfer were demonstrated in Stavrova et al. (2016).Consistent with prior magical contagion work, consumersdevalued a coat when it had been worn by a person who suf-fered from an infectious disease (vs. when it had been con-tacted by a healthy person); they similarly devalued the coatwhen it had been worn by an immoral person (compared towhen it had touched a moral person). However, differentpatterns emerged when participants were asked to judge acoat that had been designed by (but not touched by) thesame sources. Consumers devalued a coat designed by (butnot touched by) an immoral person; the same devaluationdid not occur for a coat designed by (but not touched by)an unhealthy person (vs. heathy person), which suggests thatintention-based contagion can transfer only some contagiousqualities (soul-stuff likemoral values) but not others (germs).

Going beyond the Physical: Implications for a Modelof Magical ContagionTo sum up, recent findings offer additional insights intooriginal conceptualizations of contagion—addressing issuessuch as which essences are perceived to transfer, why theymay be perceived as doing so, and how those essences trans-

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fer (through which mechanistic and functional pathways).Specifically, this newer body of work contributes by (1) rat-ifying the processes that lead to the development of bothphysical and nonphysical contagious entities, (2) continuingto document the wide variety of nonphysical essences whichcan transfer, and (3) demonstrating that physical contact isnot a prerequisite for interpersonal-moral transfer as previ-ously thought.

From the very beginning, one might argue that people’sbeliefs regarding magical contagion—and our field’s studyof it—have been fundamentally rooted in the physicalworld. Magical contagion was originally conceptualized asan adaptation against physical disease-related threats, be-fore findings from evolutionary psychology supported theclaim. Original models identified different types of conta-gion—including those of a nonphysical nature—by quasi-physical properties such as transmissibility via physicalcontact. And finally, early studies used methodology thathighlighted the importance of physical contact by explicitlymeasuring participants’ reactions to physical contact withcontaminated objects (Nemeroff and Rozin 1994).

Given, however, that recent research suggests that phys-ical contact is not a prerequisite for perceptions of essencetransfer (Smith et al. 2015; Stavrova et al. 2016), we suggestthat it may be important for future models to distinguishbetween different types of contagion based on the dominantunderlying process. As mentioned, most negative forms ofcontagion appear to be driven by disgust (e.g., Argo et al.2006; Morales and Fitzsimons 2007), and onemight predictthat these forms of contagion would be most likely to affectvery “physical” dependent measures such as one’s willing-ness to contact a contaminated object. In contrast, many in-stances of positive contagion appear to hinge on arguablyless visceral factors, such as whether participants are moti-vated to value the target in the first place. For example, lux-ury products manufactured in a company’s long-standingfactory are perceived as retaining the ‘essence of the brand’and thus valued more, but only if participants liked thebrand (i.e., they deemed the essence self-relevant; Newmanand Dhar 2014). Consumers were more likely to prefer aprint of a Barack Obama presidential campaign poster thathad an earlier serial number (2nd out of 1,500) rather than alater serial number (1,457th out of 1,500) but only if theyheld a favorable opinion of Obama (Smith et al. 2015). Forthese effects, other mechanisms besides disgust are argu-ablyoperating to link contagionbeliefswithpositivevaluation.

These findings suggest that it might be important to dis-tinguish between the type of essences and the manner with

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which we measure their influence in future models. Onecould differentiate between a contaminated object’s contactvalue (e.g., one’s desire to physically touch the contaminatedobject), personal value (e.g., the symbolic value of owner-ship, where the object is perceived to have self-relevance),and market value (e.g., the extent to which one perceivesthe object to be of monetary worth), as all three may be dif-ferentially affected by the specific process underlying thecontagion effect. For example, most of the negatively con-taminated objects explored in the literature thus far are lowin contact value, personal value, and market value (e.g., dog-doo; a sweater worn by a disliked person; Nemeroff andRozin 1994). In certain cases, however, negatively contami-nated objects can also be of high market value (e.g., posses-sions of Adolf Hitler or Bernie Madoff; Newman and Bloom2014). Based on this alternate perspective, it becomes lessclear that the three instances of contagion belong to thesame category, since in the latter case, people retain physicalaversions to a celebrity possession but nevertheless perceivethe object to be of elevated value (i.e., they are not rejectingthe object in its entirety and, in fact, apply contagion-relatedreasoning to enhance its monetary worth). Similarly, conta-gion effects have been shown to operate in beliefs about sen-timental objects (Grayson and Shulman 2000; Gjersoe et al.2014), which are presumably high in personal value but lowin perceived market value.

Indeed, recent advances in contagion research suggestintriguing lines forward to help understand how magicalcontagion beliefs structure consumer judgments. Specifi-cally, rather than classify contagion effects via various ty-pologies or valence, it may be more useful to classify themaccording to the underlying psychological processes (e.g.,disgust, identity, essentialism) and the dependent measureof interest (e.g., desires for physical contact, personal valua-tion, and market valuation). We surmise that, moving for-ward, focusing on the processes that drive different typesof contagion effects (as opposed to their valence, or physical-ity) may broaden and deepen existing models of contagion.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Two decades ago, Paul Rozin and his colleagues codified thevarieties of magical contagion by examining how Americansthink about people and objects which come into contactwith each other. Here, we have reviewed how the wealthof empirical studies conducted since this early work largelycomport with original conceptualizations of contagion be-liefs. Research conducted in the intervening years has high-lighted two basic domains of contagion beliefs, those involv-

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438 Catching (Up with) Magical Contagion Huang, Ackerman, and Newman

ing physical and nonphysical essences. Physical beliefs ap-pear most strongly linked to a suite of adaptive psycholog-ical processes grounded in concepts relating to germ trans-fer and mechanisms such as disgust (e.g., Argo et al. 2006;Morales and Fitzsimons 2007; see also Rozin et al. 1986;Rozin and Fallon 1987; Rozin and Nemeroff 1990; Rozin,Haidt, and McCauley 1993). However, recent empirical de-velopments have demonstrated how nonphysical beliefs re-garding the transfer of interpersonal-moral essences bothoverlap, and are distinct from, those involved in physicalcontagion. Much of this latter work has been conductedwithin the field of consumer behavior and has expandedthinking on how and when magical contagion effects applyto valuation and decisionmaking. In the remaining sections,we consider open questions and implications of this workfor consumer research and practice.

Mapping the Extended Self and Interactionwith Consumer ProductsSome of the original work by Nemeroff and Rozin (1994)suggested that magical contagion might offer “a usefulway of studying self-concepts, ego-boundaries, and desiresto merge with or separate from others, and mapping thelimits and flexibility of the extended self” (183). We agreethat future research could profitably apply the contagionapproach to better understand such concepts, particularlywith regards to how possessions reflect consumers’ extendedselves (Belk 1988). As mentioned earlier, existing researchoffers preliminary support for this notion, as when onlyindividuals who held a favorable opinion of Barack Obamapreferred a presidential campaign poster with an earlier(vs. later) serial number (Smith et al. 2015). Presumably,participants who voiced lower approval ratings of Obamafound his essence to be less in alignment with their ownidentities, and subsequently placed a smaller premium ontemporal proximity to him. Similarly, products manufac-tured in a company’s long-standing factory were perceivedas retaining the “essence of the brand” and thus preferredmore but only if participants liked the brand (in otherwords, deemed the essence self-relevant and thus valuedit; Newman and Dhar 2014). For brands that seek to createidentities that overlap or connect with consumer identities,contagion may provide a means of psychologically shapingboth the brand and consumers themselves.

This research suggests important boundary conditions,however, in the types of sources used to initiate contagionperceptions. For example, consumers value objects more ifthey are labeled as being made by generic strangers instead

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of machines (Job et al. 2017), while consumers purchasehandmade products as gifts for those they care about be-cause such products symbolically “contain love” (Fuchs,Schreier, and vanOsselaer 2015).Whether a product is trulyseen to contain this essence, however, may depend onwhether the intender (gift giver) versus the creator (giftmaker) has imbued the gift with love. In such cases, the per-ceived relationship between the source (of the love) and thegift should be dose-sensitive and contingent on identity-relevance for the involved parties, such that a giver may per-ceive a gift as embodying more love if it has personal (i.e.,self-concept) relevance for both giver and recipient.

The incorporation of essences into the self-concept alsointroduces self-presentation and social inclusion concernsas relevant psychological processes. To the extent that otherpeople can be incorporated into one’s own self-concept(Aron, Aron, and Smollan 1992; Gardner, Gabriel, and Lee1999), people who experience social rejection may be subse-quently more likely to perceive essences in branded prod-ucts and nonmaterial objects like music. Such a findingwould be consistent with research which suggests that peo-ple who are chronically lonely or induced to feel lonely tendto perceive nonhuman agents as more humanlike (Epley,Waytz, and Cacioppo 2008), while individuals high in theneed to belong show greater valuation of celebrity memora-bilia (Newman and Smith 2016) and consumers facing rejec-tion value symbolic and aspirational products (Mead et al.2011; Ward and Dahl 2014). Research suggests that envi-ronmental triggers are capable of triggering goals that thenunconsciously shift people’s perceptions, evaluations, andbehaviors (Dijksterhuis et al. 2005; Huang and Bargh 2014);indeed, exposing participants to specific external cues canaffect whether they perceive essences to spread (Newmanet al. 2011; Hingston, McManus, and Noseworthy 2016).For example, participants who were made to feel socially re-jected during a computerized ball toss gameweremore likelyto prefer items which had been contacted by their favoritecelebrity, compared to participants who had not been ex-cluded (Newman and Smith 2016). It stands to reason thatsome triggers, particularly those that threaten the self, maybe particularly effective for encouraging consumers’ percep-tions that an essence exists and is transferable within prod-ucts.

Additional open questions remain regarding the extentto which contagion effects follow original observations thattheir influence “continues after physical contact has endedand may be permanent” (Rozin and Nemeroff 1990, 159).Indeed, research relevant to essence contagion tends to fo-

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cus not only on the valence of an essence and how it trans-fers from a source to another object or person, but also onthe consequences of that transfer for individuals (see Rozinet al. 1986). That is, a person may be fundamentally changedby the contaminating essence of another person. Considerthe classic example from Rozin and Nemeroff (2002) aboutpeople’s unwillingness to touch a sweater worn by Hitler.Contact with (and perhaps even simple ownership of) suchan object can symbolically pollute the recipient, essentiallymaking him or her a worse person. In other words, to whatextent are people are imbued (or not) permanently with thetransformational “soul-stuff ”? When participants’ confidenceat their own basketball abilities increased after touching aball they were told had previously been in contact with a starathlete (Kramer and Block 2014), how long does this invisibleenrichment persist? If people experience guilt from physicalcontact with a moral transgressor (Eskine et al. 2013), howlong does this guilt remain? It is possible that these down-stream influences on self-perception likely involve morethan changes for the single characteristic in question andare ultimately capable of spreading to individuals’ broaderself-concepts. Indeed, Nemeroff and Rozin speculated thatthe study of personality may usefully draw on an under-standing of contagion as an agent of long-lasting change.

Additional future researchmay explore the consequencesof third-party perception, when people observe others in-teracting with essence-laden objects. For instance, studiessuggest that people expect consumers who come into con-tact with a celebrity-owned product to behave in a mannerconsistent with the traits of that celebrity (Hingston et al.2016). Even perceiving that a person has contacted an ev-eryday object like currency has been shown to affect con-sumers’ intuitions that the object somehow belongs to thatperson (Uhlmann and Zhu 2013), reinforcing the notionthat perceiving contagion between an object/source and an-other person has interesting and potentially important con-sequences for marketing research. Products, or perhaps evenlarger brands, may come to be seen as symbolically “owned”by people or groups who have acted as essence sources (or re-cipients), with implications for how subsequent consumersseek to acquire or avoid such items.

Finally, existing research suggests ways in which conta-gion beliefs or concerns can trigger desires to connect withor separate from others. Findings from behavioral immunestudies show that cues to pathogen threat do not universallylead people to shun to contact with objects or others. In-stead, familiarity and prior interaction seem to play keyroles. Germ-relevant cues motivate devaluation and aver-

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sion of outgroupmembers, foreign cuisines, and physical in-teractions with products touched by strangers (Huang et al.2011, 2017; Li et al. 2017). Yet they also motivate desiresfor increased connection with ingroup members, domesticcuisines, and adherence to social norms (see Murray andSchaller [2016] for a review). These latter effects can culmi-nate in patterns of behavior such as decreased extraversionbut increased collectivist tendencies (Fincher et al. 2008;Schaller andMurray 2008). Use of contagion concepts couldtherefore help inform both specific and broad consumerpropensities and may even play a role in cultural differencesin consumer decision making (e.g., to the extent that cul-tures differ in ecological or normative cues to germ expo-sure).

Practical ImplicationsImparting Brand Essences into Products. Organizing thecontagion literature along physical versus nonphysical meth-ods of transference suggests novel possibilities for real-world application. Firms may benefit from exploring multi-ple ways with which to build consumer perceptions that adesired essence has been imparted onto a product. If prod-ucts manufactured in a company’s original factory are seenas possessing the essence of the brand (Newman and Dhar2014), presumably product and category extensions couldalso benefit from physical or symbolic connection to thebrand’s origin. Similarly, brands whose essences are inti-mately connected with highly publicized founders (i.e., Ap-ple and Steve Jobs; Walmart and SamWalton) may leveragecontagion effects as well. Product extensions may appearmore authentic if the founder envisioned that the companywould one day carry such a product, or if the founder is usedin advertising for that extension, highlighting the notionthat connections to a great company’s origins offer a strate-gic asset (Zook 2016).

Future research might consider the varying conditionsunder which brands are perceived to have an essence capa-ble of transfer in the first place. An implicit assumption ofthe interpersonal-moral contagion literature is that the es-sence should have self-relevance; it therefore may be thecase that more anthropomorphic brands are better candi-dates for contagion effects. Whether contagion effects frombrand essences exert a permanent or fleeting influence overassociated products, however, remains an open question.

Imparting Consumers’ Essences into Products. Firms mayadditionally benefit from exploring different ways to buildconsumer perceptions that a desired essence has been im-

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440 Catching (Up with) Magical Contagion Huang, Ackerman, and Newman

parted on a particular product. For example, research sug-gests that consumers value replicas of famous musicians’instruments, even if those instruments have never beenin contact with the celebrity (Fernandez and Lastovicka2011). Such research suggests additional pathways throughwhich to infuse consumer products with symbolic or asso-ciational value.

Indeed, merely touching an object has been shown to in-crease perceptions of ownership (Peck and Shu 2009),while Peck, Barger, and Webb (2013) show this is true evenwith imagined touch (which can be seen as a symbolic formof contact with a product). Similarly, browsing online as-sortments of products through touch-based devices liketablets (vs. traditional computers) leads to higher productvaluations through increased psychological ownership ofthose products (Brasel and Gips 2014). Even everyday ob-jects like currency can be seen as possessing “essences” thatcan become associated with their owners via contact (Uhl-mann and Zhu 2013). It is possible that increased connec-tion to touched objects may be driven in part by contagionprocesses, where the consumer imparts an essence to anobject, changing it to be more self-similar (and thus morepreferred). If so, firms may want to leverage this processfor some brands and product categories more than others.Consider products that are intended to be highly custom-izable by individual consumers. Presumably, these productsare “open” to essence transfer by owners more than pre-defined products. Sellers of customizable products may seeheightened consumer attachment to the extent that consum-ers perceive indicators of contact (or other essence transfermechanisms) with these products during the customizationprocess.

Imparting Essences into Owners. Given that contagion ef-fects presume that something (tangible or intangible) cantransfer from object to owner, consumers may seek partic-ular products with the explicit goal of incorporating that es-sence into his or her self (for example, a new owner mayacquire artwork which embodies an artist’s essence, andsubsequently perceive him- or herself as more creative).Moreover, perceptions of interpersonal contagion may becolored by targets’ physical proximity to locations that rep-resent desired self-relevant values (such as New York’s WallStreet and economic achievement) or emotional events(Savani et al. 2011). One interesting prediction is that, un-like that described above for customizable products, brandsthat intend to impart authenticity as an essence shouldwant to minimize the backward transfer of owner essence

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into the owned product. Instead, these brands should seekto frame contagion as proceeding only from product to con-sumer.

Removing Essences from Products to Reduce Owner At-tachment. Because objects can be contaminated by theirprevious owners (and consumers realize this), firms en-gaged in secondhand markets (e.g., estate sales, used prod-uct retailers) may benefit from knowledge regarding howto disrupt contagion processes. Often, these markets maybe dominated by physical contagion effects (see Huang et al.2017), though the symbolic nature ofmany associated prod-ucts may also implicate interpersonal contagion effects.Knowing how people can dissociate themselves (or lovedones) from objects may be useful for firms wishing to facil-itate smooth transitions for their clients (Lastovicka andFernandez 2005). In cases where possessions are seen ascontaining physical traces of a departed loved one, a firmmay recommend purification services; if the object is im-bued withmore abstract essences, a firmmay help the ownercreate a meaningful narrative around divestment (e.g., “Let-ting others enjoy the gift is a way for my loved one to liveon”).

Moreover, understanding processes that encourage re-moval of essences from products would be useful infor-mation for firms interested in having owners dispose of,upgrade, or resell products. If consumers feel like their es-sences have been imparted to an owned product (or thatproduct is a “part” of them), this can create attachment andaversion to product disposition. For instance, IKEA created apopular commercial titled “Death of a Lamp” that highlightedthe attachment consumers feel with owned products andsought to interrupt this feeling by labeling it asmisguided. Thistype of approach is relevant to firms that wish to spur in-creased consumption as well as those which regularly intro-duce upgraded products to the market (Bellezza, Ackerman,and Gino 2015). It remains possible, for instance, that meth-ods of alleviating contagion effects (e.g., cleansing a sense ofconnection with owned products) may support increased con-sumer openness to new product offerings.

ConclusionThe topic of magical contagion continues to fascinate schol-ars frommany different fields. Recent research continues todeepen and extend original conceptualizations of contagionand, ultimately, provides useful lines forward to enhanceour understanding of this captivating and prevalent phe-nomenon.

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