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.

In my research at the SoKo lab, I apply social cognition theories to explain consumer perceptions and behaviour. Specifically, I research how consumers use cues from their (social) environment to form beliefs about food in general, such as about the relationship between healthy and tasty food, and judgements about particular products. Also, in the ComMEATted project, I investigate how to encourage consumers to adopt novel meat alternatives.

Current position

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

Education

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

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

2015 – 2022
Bachelor of arts
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., Pivecka, N., and Florack, A. (September 2024). Why we think unhealthy food tastes better: From cognitive illusions to unfavorable beliefs about food. Talk presented at the Association for Consumer Research (ACR) conference, Paris, France.
  • Kunz, S., Pivecka, N., Dietachmair, C., & Florack, A. (September 2024) Seeing is misbelieving: Consumers wrongly believe that unhealthy food tastes better when there is more of it. Talk presented at the DGPs ÖGP congress, Vienna, Austria.
  • Kunz, S., Haasova, S., Pivecka, N., Schmidt, J., & Florack, A. (August 2023). Food is all around: How contexts create misbeliefs about the health-taste relationship. Talk presented at the ESCON transfer of knowledge conference, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
  • 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., 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.