If It's Useful and You Know It, Do You Eat? Preschoolers Refrain from Instrumental Food

Maimaran, Michal; Fishbach, Ayelet

doi:10.1086/677224

Cited by 107 publications

(98 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…The “delicious” taste of healthy foods could be used to encourage their consumption, especially those that children routinely dislike (e.g., vegetables). Indeed it is essential that intervention programs do not undermine hedonics given that research has shown that preschoolers are less likely to consume a food if they hear messages that try to convince them of the food's instrumental benefits (e.g., “this food will make you strong”) (Maimaran & Fishbach, 2014). Research has also shown that children's liking of a beverage decreases considerably when a beverage is explicitly labeled as healthy because children associate health with poor taste (Wardle & Huon, 2000).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predictors of children’s food selection: The role of children’s perceptions of the health and taste of foods

Nguyen

Girgis

Robinson

2015

Food Quality and Preference

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Food selection, decisions about which foods to eat, is a ubiquitous part of our everyday lives. The aim of this research was to investigate the role of taste versus health perceptions in 4- and 6-year-old children's food selection. In this study, children and young adults were asked to rate the health and presumed taste of foods. Participants were also asked to indicate whether they would eat these foods in a food selection task. Overall, the results showed that taste was a strong predictor of individuals’ food selection above and beyond the variance associated with age, health ratings, and interactions between age and presumed taste ratings as well as age and health ratings. These results contribute to our understanding of children's food selection, and the relative importance of a food's taste versus health in the development of these decisions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predictors of children’s food selection: The role of children’s perceptions of the health and taste of foods

Nguyen

Girgis

Robinson

2015

Food Quality and Preference

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“…When a cue activates their stored knowledge, however, children as young as nine (the youngest age included in the research) are able to use this knowledge to control their responses (Brucks, Armstrong, & Goldberg, 1988). Recent research shows that a health message about a food only impacts preschoolers' eating if the message is accessible at the time of consumption (Maimaran & Fishbach, 2014).…”

Section: H2mentioning

confidence: 99%

Kids, cartoons, and cookies: Stereotype priming effects on children's food consumption

et al. 2015

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In studies with adult participants, exposure to a prime that activates a stereotype can lead to stereotype-consistent behavior. Given significant differences in cognitive development, stereotype formation, and use of stereotypes from early childhood to adulthood, the emergence of such behavioral priming effects in childhood is uncertain. To begin addressing whether children exhibit behavioral priming effects from stereotype exposure, we conduct three experiments in which children are exposed to either a normal weight or overweight cartoon character prime, and subsequently (as an unrelated activity) have access to high energy, low-nutrient food. Our results with children from 6 to 14 years old indicate that overweight cartoon character primes can activate the overweight stereotype, leading to relatively high levels of food intake. This effect persisted when participants were simultaneously exposed to a normal weight and an overweight character together (study 2), and was successfully moderated by the activation of health knowledge (study 3).

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“…They selected the goal of dietary variety because it should remain a core component of nutritional education throughout development and should be robust over debates about what constitutes healthy food. It also avoids some of the pitfalls-for example, of emphasizing healthy versus unhealthy foods (which often implies that unhealthy foods taste bettter; Maimaran & Fishbach, 2014;Wardle & Huon, 2000), or teaching portion control (which might lead to eating disorders; S. L. Johnson & Birch, 1994).…”

Section: Case Study 4: Nutritionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theory-based explanation as intervention

Weisman

Markman

2017

Psychon Bull Rev

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Cogent explanations are an indispensable means of providing new information and an essential component of effective education. Beyond this, we argue that there is tremendous untapped potential in using explanations to motivate behavior change. In this article we focus on health interventions. We review four case studies that used carefully tailored explanations to address gaps and misconceptions in people's intuitive theories, providing participants with a conceptual framework for understanding how and why some recommended behavior is an effective way of achieving a health goal. These case studies targeted a variety of health-promoting behaviors: (1) children washing their hands to prevent viral epidemics; (2) parents vaccinating their children to stem the resurgence of infectious diseases; (3) adults completing the full course of an antibiotic prescription to reduce antibiotic resistance; and (4) children eating a variety of healthy foods to improve unhealthy diets. Simply telling people to engage in these behaviors has been largely ineffective-if anything, concern about these issues is mounting. But in each case, teaching participants coherent explanatory frameworks for understanding health recommendations has shown great promise, with such theory-based explanations outperforming state-of-the-art interventions from national health authorities. We contrast theorybased explanations both with simply listing facts, information, and advice and with providing a full-blown educational curriculum, and argue for providing the minimum amount of information required to understand the causal link between a target behavior and a health outcome. We argue that such theory-based explanations lend people the motivation and confidence to act on their new understanding.

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If It's Useful and You Know It, Do You Eat? Preschoolers Refrain from Instrumental Food

Cited by 107 publications

References 67 publications

Predictors of children’s food selection: The role of children’s perceptions of the health and taste of foods

Predictors of children’s food selection: The role of children’s perceptions of the health and taste of foods

Kids, cartoons, and cookies: Stereotype priming effects on children's food consumption

Theory-based explanation as intervention

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