Weight as an Embodiment of Importance: Replication and Extensions

Jostmann, Lakens, and Schubert (2009) reported that holding a heavy (vs. light) book led to higher importance ratings of having a voice in a decision-making procedure. The present authors replicated this method in a highly powered study and extended it by including additional measures, and did not find exactly the same results. There were no main effect of weight on the importance of having a voice in a decision-making procedure, importance of a book, and importance of healthy eating. However, the present design was slightly different, as the authors included three (counterbalanced) assessments of the effects. When the authors conducted the analysis on the first measurement only in the counterbalanced design, they found the effects on the perceived importance of a book, but with a smaller effect size than the original. In this analysis, they also confirmed earlier findings that this effect only occurs when participants find reading important. When the question about having a voice in a decision-making procedure was asked first, the effect of weight was marginally significant and in the opposite direction. This could potentially be a contrast effect. It may be that the effect only occurs for measures regarding which the participant do not have strong opinions about, but the authors form new testable hypotheses at the end of the manuscript to update Jostmann et al.’s (2009) model.