Abstract
Recent evidence suggests that products believed to be healthy may be over-consumed relative to believed indulgent or highly caloric products. The extent to which these effects relate to expectations from labelling, oral experience or assimilation of expectations is unclear. Over two experiments, we tested the hypotheses that healthy and indulgent information could be assimilated by oral experience of beverages and influence sensory evaluation, expected satiety, satiation and subsequent appetite. Additionally, we explored how expectation-experience congruency influenced these factors. Results supported some assimilation of healthiness and indulgent ratings—study 1 showed that indulgent ratings enhanced by the indulgent label persisted post-tasting, and this resulted in increased fullness ratings. In study 2, congruency of healthy labels and oral experience promoted enhanced healthiness ratings. These healthiness and indulgent beliefs did not influence sensory analysis or intake—these were dictated by the products themselves. Healthy labels, but not experience, were associated with decreased expected satiety. Overall labels generated expectations, and some assimilation where there were congruencies between expectation and experience, but oral experience tended to override initial expectations to determine ultimate sensory evaluations and intake. Familiarity with the sensory properties of the test beverages may have resulted in the use of prior knowledge, rather than the label information, to guide evaluations and behaviour.
Highlights
Recent evidence suggests that products believed to be healthy may be over-consumed relative to believed indulgent or highly caloric products
We predicted that the label would influence ratings of the sensory characteristics. We explored how these factors were influenced by the congruence between label information and oral experience
Baseline fullness was subsequently entered as a covariate in analyses, it was not found to co-vary significantly on any analysis
Summary
Recent evidence suggests that products believed to be healthy may be over-consumed relative to believed indulgent or highly caloric products. A common marketing strategy is to highlight products’ health-relevant properties It is unclear whether consumers benefit from these marketing methods. Several studies suggest that products believed to be healthy are over-consumed relative to believed indulgent or highly caloric products despite decreased palatability expectations [10, 13,14,15,16]. These findings have been attributed to “halo” effects—positive attitudes towards an aspect of a stimulus resulting in overall positive evaluation or overgeneralizations of positivity to other aspects of that stimulus [17]. In the context of believed-healthy foods, this results in lowered calorie estimations [18]; increased intake norms [13]; attribution of additional, unmentioned, healthy characteristics to products [19]; and holistic judgments of products as healthy or unhealthy [20]
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