Tell me what you imagine and I will tell you what you want: The effects of mental simulation on desire and food choice

From Screen to Table: How Douyin Food Bloggers Stimulate and Convert Viewer Interests

In the era of social media, the influence of food exploration bloggers is increasingly apparent. Sharing their culinary experiences stimulates the audience's interest in visiting and consuming food destinations. This paper seeks to understand how the characteristics of food exploration bloggers on the Douyin platform influence audience perceptions of food and locations and how these perceptions may relate to visiting intentions, using the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model. A cross-sectional online survey analyzed responses from 437 individuals interested in food exploration videos on Douyin. The results indicate that source credibility is significantly associated with the stimulation of taste desires and the formation of taste awareness. The audience's taste desire and taste awareness are positively linked to the intention to visit. This study contributes to the expansion of the SOR model's application in digital media, underscoring the substantial role of social media in influencing audience consumption intentions. It highlights that as an effective communication tool, social media can significantly impact users' behavioral responses and consumption decisions.

How consumption and reward features affect desire for food, consumption intentions, and behaviour

Understanding the mechanisms that underlie desire and intentions may assist in the search for strategies to promote the selection and consumption of more sustainable and healthier products. Therefore, we conducted two experiments to examine how cognitive representations influence desire and intentions for various savoury dishes. In Experiment 1, 1000 participants were allocated to one of five conditions, listing either the typical, sensory, context, hedonic, or health features of 20 popular dishes to assess cognitive representations, before rating their present moment desire to consume each dish. Although there was no direct effect of condition on desire, there was a significant mediating effect of condition on desire through the proportion of consumption and reward features listed (i.e., sensory, context, and hedonic words). In Experiment 2, 892 participants were allocated to one of four conditions, listing either the typical, sensory, context, or health features for the same 20 dishes, before rating their intention to consume each dish over the next four weeks. At a 4-week follow-up, participants rated how often they had consumed each dish. Again, there was no direct effect of condition on intentions, although there was a significant mediating effect of condition on intentions through consumption and reward features. This suggests that mentally simulating a previous consumption experience increases intentions to consume the dish in mind. The results also showed a positive indirect effect of consumption and reward features on behaviour through an increase in intentions. Describing healthy and sustainable products in terms of the rewarding consumption experience may increase desire and intentions to consume them, improving the health of both people and the planet.

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.

Polarizing Plates: Both Omnivores and Vegans Represent In-Group Foods With Eating Simulations

In two pre-registered experiments, we assessed how people cognitively represent meat and plant-based foods, to examine processes underlying dietary polarization in society. Food descriptions from U.K.-based omnivores (NExp. 1 = 109; NExp. 2 = 436) and vegans (NExp. 1 = 111; NExp. 2 = 407) were coded for features about consumption and reward (e.g., "rich," "indulgent," and "treat") or features independent of the consumption situation (e.g., "healthy," "protein," and "eco-friendly"). Participants used more consumption and reward features for diet-congruent dishes (meat dishes for omnivores and plant-based dishes for vegans) than for diet-incongruent dishes (vice versa). Omnivores focused on abstract, long-term consequences of plant-based foods, whereas vegans focused on the socio-political associations with meat foods. Consumption and reward features also positively predicted attractiveness ratings, the likelihood of ordering a dish, and eating intentions. These findings indicate the cognitive processes of polarized dietary groups that may hinder the mainstream transition to more sustainable food choices.

Decoding explicit and implicit representations of health and taste attributes of foods in the human brain

Obesity has become a significant problem word-wide and is strongly linked to poor food choices. Even in healthy individuals, taste perceptions often drive dietary decisions more strongly than healthiness. This study tested whether health and taste representations can be directly decoded from brain activity, both when explicitly considered, and when implicitly processed for decision-making. We used multivariate support vector regression for event-related potentials (as measured by the electroencephalogram) to estimate a regression model predicting ratings of tastiness and healthiness for each participant, based on their neural activity occurring in the first second of food cue processing. In Experiment 1, 37 healthy participants viewed images of various foods and explicitly rated their tastiness and healthiness. In Experiment 2, 89 healthy participants completed a similar rating task, followed by an additional experimental phase, in which they indicated their desire to consume snack foods with no explicit instruction to consider tastiness or healthiness. In Experiment 1 both attributes could be decoded, with taste information being available earlier than health. In Experiment 2, both dimensions were also decodable, and their significant decoding preceded the decoding of decisions (i.e., desire to consume the food). However, in Experiment 2, health representations were decodable earlier than taste representations. These results suggest that health information is activated in the brain during the early stages of dietary decisions, which is promising for designing obesity interventions aimed at quickly activating health awareness.

Does a single consumption imagery event increase food desire?

Food desire is an intense motivational state a consumer experiences toward food that accounts for much of consumption. While extant research has shown that experiencing desire elicits consumption imagery, it remains unclear whether consumption imagery alone instigates desire. Even though this directional relationship has been often speculated upon, little empirical study has considered it. This paper empirically identifies imagined consumption as an antecedent of food desire. Six studies show that consumption imagery increases food desire and suggest that this impact is due to induced feelings of deprivation. Our findings also show that increased desire explains previously researched outcomes of imagery, such as a higher willingness to pay for and consumption volumes of the imagined food.

Situating desire: Situational cues affect desire for food through eating simulations

How do situations influence food desire? Although eating typically occurs in rich background situations, research on food desire often focuses on the properties of foods and consumers, rather than on the situations in which eating takes place. Here, we take a grounded cognition perspective and suggest that a situation that is congruent with consuming a food increases simulations of eating it, which, in turn, affect desire, and the expected and actual liking of the food. We tested this idea in four pre-registered experiments (N = 524). Participants processed an image of a food presented in a congruent situation, an incongruent situation, or no background situation. Compared to the incongruent situation, the congruent situation increased expected liking of the food and desire, and this was partially or fully mediated by eating simulations. The congruent situation also increased salivation, a physiological indicator of preparing to eat. However, there was only weak and indirect evidence for congruence effects on actual liking of the food when tasted. These findings show that situational cues can affect desire for food through eating simulations. Thus, background situations play an important but understudied role in human food desires. We address implications for research using food images, and for applications to promote healthy and sustainable eating behaviour.

Pleasure or Health? The Role of Mental Simulation in Desire and Food Choices

Many times, desire possesses us and impedes us from making healthier food choices. From a grounded cognition perspective, we investigated the role of two types of mental simulation (process and outcome) in desire and food choice to understand the processes that modulate them and find strategies that encourage healthier food choices. In addition to these explicit measures, we used two implicit methods to measure approach-avoidance tendencies and visual attention. Our results showed that imagining the consumption of vice and virtue foods increased desire for the product imagined and seemed to favor the choice of a vice food. However, at an implicit level, the motivation to approach and avoid food products was neutral. Imagining the post-consumption of a vice food decreased desire for the imagined food and although it tempted people at an implicit level, it made people more prone to choose a virtue food. When a vice food was imagined, attentional bias increased for all types of food regardless of the simulation. When a virtue food was imagined, there was no effect on choice, motivation nor attentional bias. In conclusion, simply imagining certain foods is a potential solution for promoting healthier and thoughtful choices.