Effects of cueing multiple memories of eating on people's judgments about their diet.

Past research shows that recalling a single positive health-related experience, such as exercising, can encourage people's subsequent healthy behaviours. In contrast, we reasoned that attempting to recall many healthy experiences might elicit a metacognitive experience of difficulty that would lead people to perceive themselves as less healthy, and perhaps to make other health-related judgments based on this perception. In two pre-registered experiments (combined N = 729), participants recalled either "few" or "many" instances of eating either healthily or unhealthily, before rating the healthiness of their diets and completing measures of their eating preferences and choices. Contrary to our predictions, our pre-registered analyses provided minimal evidence that the number of memories people retrieved affected their judgments. However, exploratory mediation analyses suggested that two counteracting effects may have occurred, whereby retrieving more (un)healthy memories led people to identify as more (un)healthy, yet also created a sense of subjective difficulty that partially or wholly negated these effects. These findings suggest that whereas probing people's dietary memories might sometimes lead to healthier self-perceptions and dietary choices, we should also consider the possibility of backfire effects.

Front-of-pack health imagery on both 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' foods leads people to misremember seeing health claims: Two memory experiments.

Front-of-pack health imagery can shape people's inferences about food products' health benefits, even leading people to falsely remember reading health claims they never saw. However, research has typically examined these effects in situations where participants have little contextual information to guide their inferences about a product. The present research aimed to replicate the finding that front-of-pack health imagery leads participants to falsely remember reading health claims. It also extends that finding, by exploring whether this effect is moderated by the presence of contextual information signaling the product's actual 'healthiness'. In two pre-registered experiments, participants saw images of fictitious food products accompanied by written nutrition claims. Some of the products contained a health-related image whereas others did not. The supposed 'healthiness' of each product was manipulated by altering the color of the products' multiple traffic light (MTL) label (Experiment 1), or with an explicit healthiness statement (Experiment 2). Participants then attempted to remember the written claims that had appeared on each product's packaging. Health-related images increased participants' tendency to falsely remember reading health claims. But this was true regardless of whether or not participants saw contextual cues about the products' healthiness, either indirectly (Experiment 1) or directly (Experiment 2). These findings suggest that the presence of health imagery on a food product's package can lead consumers to infer health benefits, even when other, more direct cues indicate that the product is unhealthy. This research informs debates on safeguarding consumers from potentially misleading health claims, through the regulation of imagery in food marketing.

Front-of-pack images can boost the perceived health benefits of dietary products.

Images on dietary supplement packaging can help identify the products' supposed function. However, research shows that these images can also lead people to infer additional health benefits of consuming the products. The present research investigated the extent to which front-of-pack imagery affects people's perceptions of the health risks and benefits of fictional products. In three randomized experiments, participants saw fictitious dietary supplement packages. Some of the packages included a health-related image (e.g. a heart), whereas others did not. Participants were asked to infer the products' intended purpose and then to rate the perceived risks and benefits of consuming the product. In Experiment 1 (N = 546), the inclusion of a health-related image increased the perceived benefits of consuming the product, with minimal effect on the perceived risks. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2 (N = 164), but was contingent on whether each product's assumed health function was confirmed or disconfirmed. In Experiment 3 (N = 306), which used a pre-registered design and analysis plan, the inclusion of a health-related image increased the perceived benefits and decreased the perceived risks of consuming the product. Again, these effects were contingent on whether the assumed health functions were confirmed or disconfirmed. These findings indicate that health-related imagery could lead consumers to infer additional health properties from non-diagnostic information featured on a product's packaging, perhaps as a consequence of increased processing fluency. This research underscores the importance of regulating the use of imagery in health marketing, to protect consumers from the effects of potentially misleading claims.