Dr. Sonja Kunz, BSc BA MSc

Applied Social Psychology and Consumer Research

Department of Psychology
University of Vienna
Universitätsstraße 7
A-1010 Vienna

Office: C0715 (NIG)

Phone: +43-1-4277-47354

Email: sonja.kunz@univie.ac.at

Appointments only by arrangement.

As a native Viennese, I did my entire studies in Vienna, before joining the SoKo lab in 2019 as PhD candidate. My main research interests are consumer behaviour and food perception and decision making. Specifically, I research how consumers construct health and taste judgments about foods, by using cues from their environment. Besides, I completed a BA in linguistics and am highly interested in the connection between psychology and language.

Current position

University Assistant (Post-Doc), University of Vienna, Austria

Education

2019 – 2023
University of Vienna, Austria: Doctoral programme natural sciences, with honours
Dissertation field: Psychology
Advisor: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Arnd Florack

2016 – 2018
University of Vienna, Austria: Master of science, with honours
Field: Economic and social psychology
Advisor: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Arnd Florack

2015 – 2022
Bachelor of arts, with honours
Field: Linguistics

2013 – 2016
University of Vienna, Austria: Bachelor of science
Field: Psychology

Selected publications

  • Florack, A., Koch, T., Haasova, S., Kunz, S., & Alves, H. (2021). The differentiation principle: Why consumers often neglect positive attributes of novel food products. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 31(4), 684–705. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcpy.1222
  • Kunz, S., Florack, A., Campuzano, I., & Alves, H. (2021). The sustainability liability revisited: Positive versus negative differentiation of novel products by sustainability attributes. Appetite, 167, Article 105637. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2021.105637
  • Kunz, S., Haasova, S., & Florack, A. (2020). Fifty shades of food: The influence of package color saturation on health and taste in consumer judgments. Psychology and Marketing, 37(7), 900–912. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21317
  • Kunz, S., Haasova, S., Pivecka, N., Schmidt, J., & Florack, A. (2023). Food Is All Around: How Contexts Create Misbeliefs About the Health–Taste Relationship. Psychological Science, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976231158288
  • Kunz, S., Haasova, S., Rieß, J., & Florack, A. (2020). Beyond healthiness: The impact of traffic light labels on taste expectations and purchase intentions. Foods, 9(2), Article 134. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods9020134
  • Kunz, S., Pivecka, N., Dietachmayr, C., & Florack, A. (2024). Seeing is misbelieving: Consumers wrongly belief that unhealthy food tastes better when there is more of it. Appetite, 197, 107295. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2024.107295
  • Pivecka, N., Kunz, S., & Florack, A. (2023). Social class differences in dietary intake are mediated by the relationship between health and taste: Findings from a cross-sectional and longitudinal study. Food Quality and Preferences, 109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2023.104914https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2023.104914
  • Pivecka, N., Kunz, S., & Florack, A. (2024). From menus to misbeliefs: Absolute frequencies of healthy and tasty dishes predict the unhealthy = tasty belief in restaurants. Acta Psychologica, 250, 104509. doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2024.104509

Selected conferences

  • Kunz, S., Haasova, S., Pivecka, N., Schmidt, J., and Florack, A. (October 2022). Food is all around: Why the unhealthy = tasty belief might be an illusory correlation. Poster presented at the Association for Consumer Research (ACR) conference, Denver, CO, USA.
  • Kunz, S., Haasova, S., Pivecka, N., Schmidt, J., and Florack, A. (August 2022). Food is all around: Why the unhealthy = tasty belief might be an illusory correlation. Talk presented at the ESCON transfer of knowledge conference, Milano, Italy.
  • Kunz, S., Florack, A., Koch, T., Haasova, S., & Alves, H. (September 2021). The differentiation principle: Why consumers often neglect positive attributes of novel food products. Talk presented at the ESCON transfer of knowledge conference, Salzburg, Austria.
  • Kunz, S. (September 2020). The unhealthy=tasty illusion: Pseudocontingencies in (un)healthiness and tastiness perceptions of food. Talk presented at the SoDoc workshop, Munich, Germany.