Seeing is misbelieving: Consumers wrongly believe that unhealthy food tastes better when there is more of it.

Recent studies have shown that people can believe that unhealthy foods taste better, even if healthy and unhealthy foods are equally as tasty. Specifically, when tasty and unhealthy foods are frequent in one context but rare in another, people perceive unhealthy foods to taste better, even if health and taste are unrelated. Given that people often consume food in one context, the current study investigated whether false beliefs about the health-taste relationship in foods can also occur in just one single context, in which either healthy or unhealthy foods are predominant, when there is no contrasting context where the respective other food is predominant. In two experiments (N = 342), we presented participants with pictures of meals from a single context and varied the frequency of healthy and unhealthy foods between participants. Although healthy and unhealthy foods tasted equally as good, participants believed that (un)healthy foods tasted better when there were more of them. This research demonstrates that health-taste beliefs might be changed by increasing the relative frequency of healthy foods in the environment overall, not by just offering some healthy and tasty foods.

The Influence of Packaging Color on Consumer Perceptions of Healthfulness: A Systematic Review and Theoretical Framework.

When consumers evaluate a new product, packaging design plays a critical role. In particular, packaging color is a dominant design cue that influences consumer perception of a product. Several studies have investigated the influence of color on taste. However, there is limited research on the influence of packaging color on consumer health perception. As healthy eating is a focus for many consumers and public decision-makers, more knowledge is needed. The aim of this review is to provide an overview of empirical studies that have investigated the influence of packaging color on consumers' health perceptions and to provide a psychological explanation for the observed effects. The systematic review includes 20 empirical studies across different product groups. The results show that packaging color influences consumers' health perceptions. We argue that the influence of packaging color on consumer health perceptions can be explained by the following mechanisms, which are not mutually exclusive: (1) consumers rely on a color as an explicit signal for health; (2) colors are associated with beliefs that indirectly influence health assessments; and (3) colors trigger mental simulations that influence health assessments. In addition, we provide suggestions for further research that will contribute to a better understanding of when and how packaging color can help consumers make healthier food choices.

Food Is All Around: How Contexts Create Misbeliefs About the Health-Taste Relationship.

We investigated a novel cognitive-ecological account for misbeliefs about the relationship between food healthiness and tastiness. We propose that different frequencies of healthy and tasty foods in contrasting contexts can trigger perceptions that health and taste are related in ways that diverge from the actual health-taste correlation in the presented food. To investigate this proposal, we conducted three studies (total N = 369), including a taste test, with adult Prolific academic participants from the United Kingdom and undergraduate psychology students from Austria. Our results showed that different frequencies of healthy and tasty food across contrasting contexts can trigger misbeliefs about the relationship between health and taste. These findings demonstrate that properties of the food ecology combined with basic cognitive processes can help explain the formation of beliefs about food such as that unhealthy food tastes better than healthy food. Our study extends the existing explanations for food beliefs and provides a perspective on how they can be changed.

Emotions and virality: Social transmission of political messages on Twitter.

Drawing on previous literature that valence and arousal constitute the fundamental properties of emotions and that emotional content is a determinant of social transmission, this study examines the role of valence and arousal in the social transmission of politicians' messages on Twitter. For over 3,000 tweets from five Austrian party leaders, the discrete emotion that the message intended to elicit in its recipients was captured by human coders and then classified on its valence (positive or negative) and arousal (low or high). We examined the effects of valence and arousal on the retweet probability of messages. Results indicate that tweets eliciting a negative (vs. positive) valence decreased retweet probability, whereas tweets eliciting a high (vs. low) arousal increased retweet probability. The present research replicates previous findings that arousal constitutes a determinant of social transmission but extends this mechanism to the realm of political communication on Twitter. Moreover, in contrast to the frequently mentioned negativity bias, positive emotions increased the likelihood of a message being shared in this study.

Investigating the mechanisms by which selective attention affects subsequent preferences and choice.

In two experiments, we investigated two untested assumptions regarding the mechanism by which selective attention during search affects subsequent preferences for objects. First, we tested whether an increase in visual competition during search increases preferences for relevant objects and decreases preferences for irrelevant objects subsequent to search. Second, we tested whether searching for objects increases the perceived fluency to process relevant objects and decreases the perceived fluency to process irrelevant objects. Our results show that search can affect relevant and irrelevant objects differently. Selective attention increased preferences for target objects subsequent to search, whereas selective attention did not affect preferences for distractors. Furthermore, our results indicate that searching for a target object increased the perceived fluency for this target object during choice, whereas ignoring a distractor product blocked mere exposure effects. Contrary to assumptions made in previous research, we found no indication that the competition for visual resources during search is linked to preferences for targets or distractors.

When Food Co-Branding Backfires: The Overexpectation Effect.

While food research has paid considerable attention to the effect of brand names on brand evaluation, the role of co-branding strategies and hence simultaneous exposure to two different brand names is under-researched. Against this background, we investigated the overexpectation effect in the context of food co-branding. More specifically, we explored to what extent food co-branding can harm brand evaluations of the co-brand and the brand level of the partner. In doing so, we challenged the conventional wisdom that co-branding leads to higher brand evaluations than those of monobrands. Results from two online experiments confirmed the theoretical reasoning derived from adaptive learning models: combining two brands results in an overexpectation effect, which manifests in a decrease in levels of brand evaluation for the co-brand compared to the partnering brands before co-brand exposure. Brand strength and brand fit moderate this effect.

The contributions of social comparison to social network site addiction.

Excessive use of social network sites (SNSs) can often lead to negative consequences of frequent upward social comparisons despite having the social network platform to present users in a favorable light. However, the existing literature gives little evidence to social comparison related antecedents and consequents of uncontrollable use of SNSs. The present study aimed to investigate the contributions of social comparison to SNS addiction. In Study 1, using a convenient sample in Austria (n = 103), we showed that the tendency to engage in social comparisons of ability (but not of opinion) predicted self-reported SNS addiction over and above the feelings of relative deprivation on social support and status. SNS addiction mediated the relations between social comparison of ability and stress, but not self-esteem. In Study 2, using a broad sample of participants in Austria (n = 500), we replicated the findings observed in Study 1 and showed that contrastive upward social comparison emotions (i.e., envy, depression) mediated the relation between SNS addiction and lower self-esteem whereas the contrastive downward social comparison emotion (i.e., contentment) mediated the relation between SNS addiction and higher self-esteem. Our findings suggest that SNS addiction closely relates to psychological constructs relevant to social comparison, mediates the link between social comparison of ability and detrimental consequences (i.e., stress, well-being) and demonstrate how social comparison emotions relate to both positive and negative associations between SNS addiction and self-esteem.

When Social Interaction Backfires: Frequent Social Interaction During the COVID-19 Pandemic Is Associated With Decreased Well-Being and Higher Panic Buying.

The present research investigated a backfiring effect of social interaction on well-being and general confidence in Western populations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across two studies, we observed that stronger self-other connectedness and frequent social communication with others during the first few weeks into the quarantine period were associated with worsened well-being and decreased general confidence. In Study 1 (n = 331), we showed that people who reported higher social connectedness and more frequent social interaction experienced declined well-being. In Study 2 (n = 327), we replicated the backfiring effect and showed that those who engaged in frequent social interaction, especially in COVID-19 related conversations, reported decreased general confidence, which mediated the accelerating effect of social interaction on panic buying. Overall, our findings indicated that frequent social interaction under a highly novel and uncertain crisis can relate to negative consequences on mental health and behavior.

The sustainability liability revisited: Positive versus negative differentiation of novel products by sustainability attributes.

In response to a growing consumer trend towards meat reduction and more plant-based diets, the food industry develops meat-reduced food innovations, such as blended products which replace part of their meat with plant-based ingredients. These products are usually promoted as being more sustainable than existing products. However, it is not clear whether sustainability attributes are used by consumers to positively or negatively differentiate these novel products from existing ones. We investigated these two possibilities in two studies. In Study 1, we tested in an online survey whether positive sustainability attributes of novel food products generally affect purchase intentions in a positive or negative way, mediated by taste expectations. In Study 2, we investigated in a field study in a restaurant the choice of a novel blended meat product versus a classic product. In particular, we tested whether the blended meat product is more likely to share positive attributes with a classic alternative than negative attributes and might therefore lack the power of positive differentiation. The results of Study 1 show a positive differentiation by sustainability when taste attributes are equal compared with a classic product. However, Study 2 demonstrates that the mechanisms of a negative differentiation might attenuate these positive effects, because positive hedonic attributes of the novel blendedmeat product more likely apply also to the classic product than the negative attributes.

Not Too Much and Not Too Little: Information Processing for a Good Purchase Decision.

When deciding on an online purchase, consumers often face a plethora of information. Yet, individuals consumers differ greatly in the amount of information they are willing and able to acquire and process before making purchasing decisions. Extensively processing all available information does not necessarily promote good decisions. Instead, the empirical evidence suggests that reviewing too much information or too many choice alternatives can impair decision quality. Using simulated contract conclusion scenarios, we identify distinctive types of information processing styles and find that certain search and selection strategies predict the quality of the final choice. Participants (N = 363) chose a cellular service contract in a web-based environment that closely resembled actual online settings in the country of study. Using information processing data obtained with tracking software, we identify three consumer segments differing along two dimensions - the extent dimension, referring to the overall effort invested in information processing, and the focus dimension, referring to the degree to which someone focuses on the best available options. The three subgroups of respondents can be characterized as follows: (1) consumers with a low-effort and low-focus information processing strategy (n = 137); (2) consumers with a moderate-effort and high-focus information processing strategy (n = 124); and (3) consumers with high-effort and low-focus information processing strategy (n = 102). The three groups differed not only in their information processing but also in the quality of their decisions. In line with the assumption of ecological rationality, most successful search strategies were not exhaustive, but instead involved the focused selection and processing of a medium amount of information. Implications for effective consumer information are provided.

Uncovering men's stereotype content (warmth and competence) associated with a representative range of male body size categories.

Research indicates that 40 % of men experience weight-related stigmatization. Yet perceptions of body size continue to be understudied in men and the stereotype content of men's weight status remains largely unknown. Grounded in Stereotype Content Model, the research aims to uncover men's stereotype content associated with distinct body sizes. A pilot study tested the methodological design using a representative measure of BMI-specific images among a sample of undergraduate men (N = 80). Study 1 included the BMI-specific images to assess stereotype content among a broad online sample (N = 142) and explored how participant BMI relates to such perceptions. Study 2 included images of real men to increase the ecological validity of our findings (N = 152). We also included empathy and protestant ethics to examine possible interaction effects. Results revealed that normal to overweight men scored highest on warmth and competence, while underweight and obese classes were perceived less favorably and, evidently, stereotype perceptions were increasingly severe with adiposity. Empathy moderated evaluations of warmth toward stigmatized groups, and protestant ethics moderated warmth appraisals for underweight and normal weight targets but did not influence perceptions of competence. Overall, weight stereotype content should be considered when understanding stigma-related experiences in men.

Immediate self-information is prioritized over expanded self-information across temporal, social, spatial, and probability domains.

People construct self-representation beyond the experiential self and the self-concept can expand to interpersonal as well as intrapersonal dimensions. The cognitive ability to project oneself onto expanded selves in different time points and places plays a crucial role in planning and decision-making situations. However, no research to date has shown evidence explaining the early mechanism of how processing the experiential self-information differs from processing the expanded self-information across temporal, social, spatial, and probability domains. We report novel effects showing a systematic information prioritization toward the experiential selves (i.e., the self that is now, here, and with highest certainty) compared to the expanded selves (i.e., the self that is in the future, at a distant location, and with lower certainty; Experiments 1a, 2, and 3). Implicit prioritization biases lasted over time (Experiment 1b; i.e., 4 months) indicating a trait-like more than a state-like measure of individual differences. Different biases, however, did not consistently correlate with each other (Experiments 1a to 3) suggesting separate underlying mechanisms. We discuss potential links to the basic structure of self-representation and individual differences for implications.

Beyond Healthiness: The Impact of Traffic Light Labels on Taste Expectations and Purchase Intentions.

The aim of traffic light labels on food products is to help consumers assess their healthiness. However, it is not clear whether traffic light labels do not have undesired side effects by signaling lower tastiness of healthy product alternatives and reducing purchase intentions. We therefore conducted a study with consumers from Austria (N = 173) in which we presented the amount of sugar contained in products on labels with or without traffic light colors based on the coding criteria of the UK Food Standards Agency. Expectations of products' healthiness and tastiness, as well as purchase intentions were assessed. The products were randomly sampled from the category of desserts from a supermarket. The declared amount of sugar was experimentally varied. The traffic light labels helped participants differentiate between the healthiness of products with different sugar levels. They did not affect the expected tastiness of the healthier alternatives. Moreover, participants did not report lower purchase intentions for products high in sugar, but a higher purchase intention for products low in sugar when traffic light colors were used compared to when they were not used.

Sugar labeling: How numerical information of sugar content influences healthiness and tastiness expectations.

Overconsumption of highly sugary foods contributes to increases in obesity and diabetes in our population, and initiatives are issued worldwide to reduce sugar content in food products. However, it is unclear how the presentation of reduced sugar content on food packages affects taste expectations of consumers. Based on the learned knowledge about negative health effects of sugar and the common belief that unhealthy food tastes better than healthy food, consumers might conclude that lower sugar levels are associated with higher healthiness and lower tastiness. Addressing this concern, we examined how quantitative information about sugar content without any verbal description influences consumers' health and taste expectations of dairy desserts. We asked participants to indicate the expected healthiness and tastiness of randomly sampled dairy desserts, while varying systematically the quantitative sugar information provided in a label presented with the desserts (numerical sugar level in grams per 100 grams of product: low vs. original vs. high). We assumed that quantitative sugar content is not equally associated with healthiness and tastiness of products and that numerical information about sugar content informs health more than taste expectations. Therefore, we predicted that consumers expect higher healthiness, but not to the same degree lower tastiness for products with reduced sugar contented compared to products with higher sugar content. The results of the present study are in line with this hypothesis. We found that consumers expected desserts with less sugar to be healthier than desserts with higher levels of sugar. The experimentally varied sugar levels did not affect the tastiness expectations. Notably, consumers did not follow the unhealthy = tasty intuition and did not devaluate the tastiness of desserts because of heightened healthiness expectations. Our findings suggest that sole numerical information about sugar content-an important nutritional value-is more diagnostic in the construction of healthiness rather than tastiness expectations of food products.

Increased Preference and Value of Consumer Products by Attentional Selection.

It is usually assumed that individuals base their preferences for products or other items on the utility or value associated with the items. However, there is evidence that the attentional selection of an item alone already modulates the preference for that item. This has been shown, for instance, in preference choice tasks with unknown consumer products. Products that served as targets in a preceding visual search task were preferred to former distractor products. However, it is unclear whether such effects can also be observed when individuals have pre-existing attitudes toward products and whether attentional selection can change the perceived value of products. Hence, the aim of the present research was to replicate the attentional-selection effect on choice with known products and examine whether selective attention affects the perceived value of products beyond choosing the items. In two experiments, we replicated the attentional-selection effect on item preference in a choice task. Items that had served as targets in the search task were preferred to previous distractors. Introducing a response deadline in the preference-choice task in Experiment 2 did not further increase this effect. However, the value of former targets was rated higher than that of former distractors. Hence, the present results indicate that attentional selection not only affects preference choices but can also increase the value of attended and selected items.

Advertising models in the act of eating: How the depiction of different eating phases affects consumption desire and behavior.

In print advertising, the use of static pictures depicting models eating food is common practice. However, less is known about how the depiction of models in different phases of consumption (holding food, moving food to mouth, taking a bite, chewing on food) affects consumers. Theories have proposed that not only do individuals mimic actions, but they also adopt the goals and the motivational patterns underlying these actions by observing others. Building on this view, we hypothesized that consumers' desire to eat a food product and their actual consumption of a food product would be greater when the model in the picture was close to engaging in consumption and that desire and actual consumption would be reduced when the model was shown in the process of finishing consumption. In two studies, we found that the participants experienced an increased desire to eat the depicted food (Study 1) and ate more of the advertised food (Study 2) when the model was shown to engage in eating food compared with when the model was shown during completion of a consumption episode. In addition, the results of Study 1 suggest that even subtle differences such as holding food compared with putting food into the mouth might affect consumers' desire to eat. Overall, our results suggest that advertisements may affect consumers' motivation to engage in food intake differently depending on which consumption state they show with the depiction of a model close to engagement in food consumption being most likely to trigger a desire for consumption and an actual engagement in food intake.

Playing with food: The effects of food pre-exposure on consumption in young children.

Recent research has shown that pre-exposure to food can lead to reduced subsequent consumption in older children and adults when they focus on a task with a non-eating goal during exposure. One assumption is that the reduced consumption is a consequence of self-regulation that helps to concentrate on the task. Because self-regulatory mechanisms are still under development in young children, we studied the effects of food pre-exposure in young children under the age of six (N = 81). Children played a memory game with real sweets (food pre-exposure) or similar non-food stimuli (non-food pre-exposure) and we measured their subsequent food consumption. In contrast to the findings with older children in other studies, we found that pre-exposure led to an increase (not a decrease) in subsequent consumption. This effect was stronger among children with a higher BMI. Food exposure paradigms might not lead to the desired reduction in food intake in young children, whose BMI is positively associated with food reactivity. Thus, food exposure must continue to be considered a strong risk factor for obesity in young children.

Judgments at Gaze Value: Gaze Cuing in Banner Advertisements, Its Effect on Attention Allocation and Product Judgments.

Banner advertising is a popular means of promoting products and brands online. Although banner advertisements are often designed to be particularly attention grabbing, they frequently go unnoticed. Applying an eye-tracking procedure, the present research aimed to (a) determine whether presenting human faces (static or animated) in banner advertisements is an adequate tool for capturing consumers' attention and thus overcoming the frequently observed phenomenon of banner blindness, (b) to examine whether the gaze of a featured face possesses the ability to direct consumers' attention toward specific elements (i.e., the product) in an advertisement, and (c) to establish whether the gaze direction of an advertised face influences consumers subsequent evaluation of the advertised product. We recorded participants' eye gaze while they viewed a fictional online shopping page displaying banner advertisements that featured either no human face or a human face that was either static or animated and involved different gaze directions (toward or away from the advertised product). Moreover, we asked participants to subsequently evaluate a set of products, one of which was the product previously featured in the banner advertisement. Results showed that, when advertisements included a human face, participants' attention was more attracted by and they looked longer at animated compared with static banner advertisements. Moreover, when a face gazed toward the product region, participants' likelihood of looking at the advertised product increased regardless of whether the face was animated or not. Most important, gaze direction influenced subsequent product evaluations; that is, consumers indicated a higher intention to buy a product when it was previously presented in a banner advertisement that featured a face that gazed toward the product. The results suggest that while animation in banner advertising constitutes a salient feature that captures consumers' visual attention, gaze cuing can be an effective tool for driving viewers' attention toward specific elements in the advertisement and even shaping consumers' intentions to purchase the advertised product.

Effects of Imagined Consumption and Simulated Eating Movements on Food Intake: Thoughts about Food Are Not Always of Advantage.

Imagined food consumption is a method of elaborately imagining oneself eating a specific food that, when repeated 30 times, has been shown to decrease subsequent intake of the same food. The technique relies on a memory-based habituation process when behavioral and motivational responses to a stimulus decrease after its repeated presentation. Thus, repeatedly imagining food consumption leads to food-specific habituation effects. Large numbers of imagined consumption repetitions are effortful and time consuming and can be problematic when applied in interventions with the goal of reducing food intake. In the present study, we assessed the efficacy of the technique at smaller numbers of repetitions while testing motor simulation as a potential facilitator of the habituation-based consumption-reduction effect. 147 participants imagined eating chocolate pudding 15 or 3 consecutive times and simultaneously performed either facilitating or not-facilitating eating movements. Results showed that participants who imagined eating the chocolate pudding 15 times (M15 = 178.20, SD15 = 68.08) ate more of the pudding than those who imagined consuming it 3 times (M3 = 150.73, SD3 = 73.31). The nature of the motor movements that were performed did not impact this effect. The data suggest that the imagined food consumption technique can result in an unexpected increase in food consumption, when smaller numbers of imagination repetitions are performed.