title: Health promotion messages: the role of social presence for food choices.
abstract: We investigated whether social presence cues encourage consumers to self-regulate and select healthier food products. In the first experiment, workers completed food choices in an e-commerce environment. After the activation of health-related goals, they saw a social presence cue and were asked to choose between healthy and unhealthy food options. The analyses revealed main effects of social presence and health goal activation on food choices. These effects were additive, such that the combination of social presence and health goals induced significantly healthier choices compared with the control group. The second experiment further examined social presence cues that were presented on a menu. The results showed significant effects on food choices and on the perceived self-regulatory success in dieting. These findings indicate that social presence cues could be employed to increase healthful eating and, furthermore, that it may be useful to co-activate multiple cues in health promotion messages.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology and Education, University of Ulm, Albert-Einstein-Allee 47, 89069 Ulm, Germany. Electronic address: jenny.bittner@uni-ulm.de.
authors.forename: Jenny V
authors.initials: JV
authors.lastname: Bittner
authors.affiliation: Department of Social Sciences, Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Ecology, Bremen, Germany.
authors.forename: Micaela M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Kulesz
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D015992:Body Mass Index; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D005518:Food Preferences; D058870:Food, Organic; D006293:Health Promotion; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011897:Random Allocation; D000068356:Self-Control; D012931:Social Environment; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Food choice; Goals; Health promotion; Social presence