As a result, we’re able to make sense of the plethora of options in the toothpaste aisle, assigning each alternative an affective tag: the best option is quickly associated with the most positive emotion.

Does the author remember advertising? I forget the name, but there's an economics effect that if you use a correlated but sufficiently game-able proxy for quality, the market will "game" it and make it uncorrelated.

Anyhow, I think it's an interesting topic, but I'd much rather read the second paper (dang paywalls) than some science writer who doesn't want to remember that advertising exists.