Priming effects of television food advertising on eating behavior.
Journal Article (Journal Article)
Objective
Health advocates have focused on the prevalence of advertising for calorie-dense low-nutrient foods as a significant contributor to the obesity epidemic. This research tests the hypothesis that exposure to food advertising during TV viewing may also contribute to obesity by triggering automatic snacking of available food.Design
In Experiments 1a and 1b, elementary-school-age children watched a cartoon that contained either food advertising or advertising for other products and received a snack while watching. In Experiment 2, adults watched a TV program that included food advertising that promoted snacking and/or fun product benefits, food advertising that promoted nutrition benefits, or no food advertising. The adults then tasted and evaluated a range of healthy to unhealthy snack foods in an apparently separate experiment.Main outcome measures
Amount of snack foods consumed during and after advertising exposure.Results
Children consumed 45% more when exposed to food advertising. Adults consumed more of both healthy and unhealthy snack foods following exposure to snack food advertising compared to the other conditions. In both experiments, food advertising increased consumption of products not in the presented advertisements, and these effects were not related to reported hunger or other conscious influences.Conclusion
These experiments demonstrate the power of food advertising to prime automatic eating behaviors and thus influence far more than brand preference alone.Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Harris, JL; Bargh, JA; Brownell, KD
Published Date
- July 2009
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 28 / 4
Start / End Page
- 404 - 413
PubMed ID
- 19594263
Pubmed Central ID
- PMC2743554
Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
- 1930-7810
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- 0278-6133
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.1037/a0014399
Language
- eng