'How many calories are in my burrito?' Improving consumers' understanding of energy (calorie) range information.

OBJECTIVE: Energy (calorie) ranges currently appear on menu boards for customized menu items and will likely appear throughout the USA when menu-labelling legislation is implemented. Consumer welfare advocates have questioned whether energy ranges enable accurate energy estimates. In four studies, we examined: (i) whether energy range information improves energy estimation accuracy; (ii) whether misestimates persist because consumers misinterpret the meaning of the energy range end points; and (iii) whether energy estimates can be made more accurate by providing explicit information about the contents of items at the end points. DESIGN: Four studies were conducted, all randomized experiments. SETTING: Study 1 took place outside a Chipotle restaurant. Studies 2 to 4 took place online. SUBJECTS: Participants in study 1 were customers exiting a Chipotle restaurant (n 306). Participants in studies 2 (n 205), 3 (n 290) and 4 (n 874) were from an online panel. RESULTS: Energy ranges reduced energy misestimation across different menu items (studies 1-4). One cause of remaining misestimation was misinterpretation of the low end point's meaning (study 2). Providing explicit information about the contents of menu items associated with energy range end points further reduced energy misestimation (study 3) across different menu items (study 4). CONCLUSIONS: Energy range information improved energy estimation accuracy and defining the meaning of the end points further improved accuracy. We suggest that when restaurants present energy range information to consumers, they should explicitly define the meaning of the end points.

Boundary conditions on unconscious thought in complex decision making.

Should individuals delegate thinking about complex choice problems to the unconscious? We tested two boundary conditions on this suggestion. First, we found that in a decision environment similar to those studied previously, self-paced conscious thought and unconscious thought had similar advantages over conscious thought constrained to a long fixed time interval in terms of identifying the option with the highest number of positive outcomes. Second, we found that self-paced conscious thought performed better than unconscious thought in a second decision environment where performance depended to a greater extent on magnitudes of the attributes. Thus, we argue that it is critical to take into account the interaction of forms of processing with task demands (choice environments) when considering how to approach complex choice problems.

The effects of nonconsciously priming emotion concepts on behavior.

Current empirical evidence regarding nonconsciously priming emotion concepts is limited to positively versus negatively valenced affect. This article demonstrates that specific, equally valenced emotion concepts can be nonconsciously activated, remain inaccessible to conscious awareness, and still affect behavior in an emotion-specific fashion. In Experiment 1A, participants subliminally primed with guilty emotion adjectives showed lower indulgence than did participants subliminally primed with sad emotion adjectives; even after the addition of a 5-min time delay, these results were replicated in Experiment 1B. Participants in the different priming conditions showed no differences in their subjective emotion ratings and were unaware of the emotion prime or concept activation. Experiments 2A and 2B replicated these findings using a helping measure, demonstrating that individuals primed with guilt adjectives show more helping than do individuals primed with sadness adjectives. In all studies, effects were moderated by individuals' specific emotion-response habits and characteristics.

Hope, pride, and processing during optimal and nonoptimal times of day.

We examine the conditions under which the distinct positive emotions of hope versus pride facilitate more or less fluid cognitive processing. Using individuals' naturally occurring time of day preferences (i.e., morning vs. evening hours), we show that specific positive emotions can differentially influence processing resources. We argue that specific positive emotions are more likely to influence processing and behavior during nonoptimal times of day, when association-based processing is more likely. We show in three experiments that hope, pride, and a neutral state differentially influence fluid processing on cognitive tasks. Incidental hope facilitates fluid processing during nonoptimal times of day (compared with pride and neutral), improving performance on tasks requiring fluid intelligence (Experiment 1) and increasing valuation estimates on tasks requiring that preferences be constructed on the spot (Experiments 2 and 3). We also provide evidence that these differences in preference and valuation occur through a process of increased imagination (Experiment 3). We contribute to emotion theory by showing that different positive emotions have different implications for processing during nonoptimal times of day.

Separate neural mechanisms underlie choices and strategic preferences in risky decision making.

Adaptive decision making in real-world contexts often relies on strategic simplifications of decision problems. Yet, the neural mechanisms that shape these strategies and their implementation remain largely unknown. Using an economic decision-making task, we dissociate brain regions that predict specific choices from those predicting an individual's preferred strategy. Choices that maximized gains or minimized losses were predicted by functional magnetic resonance imaging activation in ventromedial prefrontal cortex or anterior insula, respectively. However, choices that followed a simplifying strategy (i.e., attending to overall probability of winning) were associated with activation in parietal and lateral prefrontal cortices. Dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, through differential functional connectivity with parietal and insular cortex, predicted individual variability in strategic preferences. Finally, we demonstrate that robust decision strategies follow from neural sensitivity to rewards. We conclude that decision making reflects more than compensatory interaction of choice-related regions; in addition, specific brain systems potentiate choices depending on strategies, traits, and context.