Can Science Explain Our Obsession With Pumpkin Spice?

Fall is upon us in the Northern Hemisphere. In the U.S., that means cooler temperatures, shorter days, and pumpkin spice. Love it or hate it, pumpkin spice is everywhere. Of course, we’ve got our pumpkin spice coffee and scented candles, but I’ve also seen pumpkin spice flavored bone broth, special edition pumpkin spice Spam, pumpkin spice deodorant, and even pumpkin spice hummus. I shudder at the thought.

And this isn’t just a U.S.-based obsession. Starbucks offers its pumpkin spice latte in 50 countries including some in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. So in a world where we can’t seem to agree on anything, how is it that pumpkin spice is such a universal infatuation? Well, as it turns out, there's some science to explain our obsession. 

We want what we can’t have

Our desire for pumpkin spice likely comes down to the simple idea that we tend to want what we can’t have. Marketers know this and strategize accordingly. 

In the field of psychology, reactance is our urge to regain a specific freedom when we feel we’ve lost it or that it’s under threat. This response can apply to more important things like actual physical freedom or the freedom of choice in our major life decisions, but it also pertains to less significant freedoms, like the freedom to indulge in consumer products like pumpkin spice at any time of the year.

In the field of psychology, reactance is our urge to regain a specific freedom when we feel we’ve lost it or that it’s under threat.

Sharon and Jack Brehm first wrote about the theory of reactance in an article called Psychological Reactance: A Theory of Freedom and Control. They conducted a study in which they asked participants to listen to and rate four different music albums. They were then told to choose only one album to keep. The researchers then told just one group that the record they had ranked third of the four got lost during shipment and so was no longer available. After being asked to re-score the albums, two-thirds of the participants in that group gave the album they could no longer have a higher ranking. 

I see this consumer reactance firsthand every year when my daughter sells cookies as a fundraiser for her Girl Scout troop. The Girl Scouts set up a table outside of a bookstore...

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