Loading...
Battle of the primes - The effect and interplay of health and hedonic primes on food choice
Bauer,Jan M van der Laan,Nynke Bruijn,Gert-Jan de Reisch,Lucia A
Bauer,Jan M
van der Laan,Nynke
Bruijn,Gert-Jan de
Reisch,Lucia A
Abstract
People making food choices are often exposed to different cues that can activate relevant goals that influence the choice outcome. Hedonic goals are frequently primed by advertising while health policy enlists primes that activate health goals in the moment of food decision-making - e.g., healthy food labels. However, little is known about the effect of such goal-priming cues on the population level and how people respond when exposed to both types of primes simultaneously. The results of this study, based on a large, representative sample (N = 1200), show no effect of health-goal priming on healthy food choices. Being exposed to a sole hedonic prime, however, reduces healthy choices by 3%. This effect completely disappeared when both primes were presented at the same time. All effects remained insensitive to people's gender, hunger status, level of dietary restraint, and BMI. These findings cast doubt over the effectiveness of health goal primes as a tool to increase healthy food choices but suggest a protective effect against competing hedonic primes and could thereby prevent less healthy choices.
Description
Funding Information: This study has been pre-registered under https://osf.io/cxjhb/ . We declare no conflict of interest. The project has received funding under the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) as part of the Research Project ‘The Neurobiology of Decision-Making in Eating – Innovative Tools’ under Grant Agreement No. 607310 (Nudge-it), KBBE.2013.2.-01. Publisher Copyright: © 2022
Date
2022-05-01
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Files
Loading...
Battle_of_the_primes.pdf
Adobe PDF, 1.24 MB
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Keywords
CUES, EATING BEHAVIOR, Food choice, GOAL CONFLICT, Goal conflict, Health goals, OVERWEIGHT, Priming, SALIENCE
Citation
Bauer, J M, van der Laan, N, Bruijn, G-J D & Reisch, L A 2022, 'Battle of the primes - The effect and interplay of health and hedonic primes on food choice', Appetite, vol. 172, 105956. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2022.105956