Effect of health warning labels on motivation towards energy-dense snack foods: Two experimental studies
View / Open Files
Authors
Pechey, Emily
De-loyde, Katie
Morris, Richard
Maistrello, Giulia
Ziauddeen, Hisham
Publication Date
2022-05-14Journal Title
Appetite
ISSN
0195-6663
Publisher
Elsevier
Type
Article
This Version
AM
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Ventsel, M., Pechey, E., De-loyde, K., Pilling, M., Morris, R., Maistrello, G., Ziauddeen, H., et al. (2022). Effect of health warning labels on motivation towards energy-dense snack foods: Two experimental studies. Appetite https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2022.106084
Abstract
Health warning labels (HWLs) show promise in reducing motivation towards energy-dense snack foods. Understanding the underlying mechanisms could optimise their effectiveness. In two experimental studies in general population samples (Study 1 n=90; Study 2 n=1382), we compared the effects of HWLs and irrelevant aversive labels (IALs) on implicit (approach) motivation towards unhealthy snacks, using an approach-avoidance task (Study 1), and a manikin task (Study 2). We also assessed explicit motivation towards unhealthy snacks using food selection tasks. We examined whether labelling effects on motivation arose from the creation of outcome-dependent associations between the food and its health consequences or from simple, non-specific aversive associations. Both label types reduced motivation towards snack foods but only when the label was physically present. HWLs and IALs showed similar effects on implicit motivation, although HWLs reduced explicit motivation more than IALs. Thus, aversive HWLs appear to act both through low level associative mechanisms affecting implicit motivation, and by additionally emphasizing explicit causal links to health outcomes thereby affecting explicitly motivated choice behaviours.
Relationships
Is supplemented by: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.84729
Sponsorship
Wellcome Trust (206853/Z/17/Z)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2022.106084
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/337122
Statistics
Total file downloads (since January 2020). For more information on metrics see the
IRUS guide.