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The calories underestimation of "organic" food: Exploring the impact of implicit evaluations

Besson, Theo and Lalot, Fanny and Bochard, Nicolas and Flaudias, Valentin and Zerhouni, Oulmann. (2019) The calories underestimation of "organic" food: Exploring the impact of implicit evaluations. Appetite, 137. pp. 134-144.

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Official URL: https://edoc.unibas.ch/88393/

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Abstract

Specific attributes of a food product can cause it to be spontaneously but wrongly perceived as healthier than it really is (i.e., the health halo effect). Notably, there is preliminary evidence that individuals evaluate organic food as less caloric than regular, non-organic food. However, explanations regarding the cognitive mechanisms underlying the health halo effect remain scarce. Drawing from the implicit cognition literature, we hypothesize that this effect could be due to (a) the reactivation in memory of implicit positive evaluations and/or (b) the reactivation of a semantic association between the concepts "organic" and "non-caloric". We first conducted a 2 (Product label: organic versus non-organic) × continuous (Valence-IAT score) × continuous (Calorie-IAT score) study (N = 151) to test these hypotheses, and conducted a conceptual replication in a second study (N = 269). We computed Bayesian analyses alongside frequentist analyses in order to test for potential null hypotheses, as well as frequencies and Bayesian meta-regression including both datasets. Both methods provided consistent results. First, Bayesian analyses yielded extremely strong evidence in favor of the hypothesis that the organic label leads to an underestimation of caloric value. Second, they provided strong evidence that this effect is not moderated by implicit evaluations. Hence, we replicated the organic halo effect but showed that, surprisingly, it does not arise from implicit associations. We discuss these findings and propose directions for future research regarding the mechanisms underlying calories (under)estimation.
Faculties and Departments:07 Faculty of Psychology > Departement Psychologie > Society & Choice > Sozialpsychologie (Greifeneder)
UniBasel Contributors:Lalot, Fanny
Item Type:Article, refereed
Article Subtype:Research Article
Publisher:Elsevier
ISSN:0195-6663
Note:Publication type according to Uni Basel Research Database: Journal article
Identification Number:
Last Modified:04 Jul 2023 03:10
Deposited On:15 Jun 2022 12:14

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