The vicious cycle of stressors, food advertising and overeating: how stigmatizing anti-obesity PSAs, which precede food commercials, influence subsequent implicit and explicit attitudes toward high- and low-calorie food

Abstract

ABSTRACT The present study examined how negative feelings induced by anti-obesity Public Service Announcements (PSAs) influence viewers’ emotional processing of subsequent food commercials. We also investigated how this viewing experience differentially influenced viewers’ explicit and implicit attitudes toward high-calorie foods, thereby influencing their behavioral intentions towards healthy eating. In an experiment, participants first watched a series of non-obesity PSAs followed by commercials for high-calorie, low-calorie, and non- food commercials. Next, they were exposed to a set of stigmatizing anti-obesity PSAs followed by the same types of commercials. Continuous response measurements (CRM) demonstrated that viewers experienced more negative feelings during anti-obesity PSAs than during non-obesity PSAs and that they also experienced more negative feelings during high-calorie food commercials compared to low-calorie food commercials when these ads were preceded by the anti-obesity PSAs. In turn, both regular-weight and overweight viewers reported less positive explicit attitudes toward high-calorie foods. Regular-weight viewers also had lower implicit attitudes toward high-calorie foods, leading to lower behavioral intentions toward healthy eating. In contrast, overweight viewers had more positive implicit attitudes toward high-calorie foods resulting in stronger intentions toward healthy eating.