Preferences for Enhancement Pharmaceuticals: The Reluctance to Enhance Fundamental Traits

Jason Riis, Joseph P. Simmons and Geoffrey P. Goodwin

Journal of Consumer Research, 2008, vol. 35, issue 3, 495-508

Abstract: Four studies examined the willingness of young, healthy individuals to take drugs intended to enhance their own social, emotional, and cognitive traits. We found that people were much more reluctant to enhance traits believed to be more fundamental to self-identity (e.g., social comfort) than traits considered less fundamental to self-identity (e.g., concentration ability). Moral acceptability of a trait enhancement strongly predicted people's desire to legalize the enhancement but not their willingness to take the enhancement. Ad taglines that framed enhancements as enabling rather than enhancing the fundamental self increased people's interest in a fundamental trait enhancement and eliminated the preference for less fundamental over more fundamental trait enhancements. (c) 2008 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/588746 link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jconrs:v:35:y:2008:i:3:p:495-508

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Consumer Research is currently edited by Bernd Schmitt, June Cotte, Markus Giesler, Andrew Stephen and Stacy Wood

More articles in Journal of Consumer Research from Journal of Consumer Research Inc.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().