Rachel L. Bailey

Background/Objectives: This study examines the effectiveness of calorie labeling on restaurant menus by investigating how visual attention is allocated between calorie information and food cues. Although calorie labeling policies are widely implemented, prior research suggests limited impact on reducing energy intake. Methods: Using eye-tracking technology, this study explored how menu design factors (specifically visual food cues) influence attention. Results: Results from a within-subject experiment (N = 82) indicated that calorie labels received significantly fewer visual fixations (in terms of frequency and duration) when food images were present. Conversely, calorie labels did not reduce attention to food cues, highlighting an asymmetry in attentional allocations. Interestingly, restricted eaters were associated with more frequent attention to calorie labels but not with longer sustained attention to those labels. Conclusions: Overall, findings suggest that the motivational responses elicited by food cues undermine the effectiveness of calorie labeling by diverting attention away from nutritional information, limiting its utility as a public health intervention.

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is an involuntary tingling sensation that is pleasant and relaxing. Given its rapid growth in popularity and increasing appearance in food advertising and marketing schemes, this study investigated whether certain features of food-related ASMR videos are more positively experienced than others. Participants ( N = 183) took part in an experiment in which they viewed ASMR videos that varied in camera point-of-view (first-person vs. third-person) and food energy density (higher vs. lower). Results indicated that first-person videos of higher energy density foods generated the most positive emotions and evaluations as well as the most identification. Theoretical contributions and implications are discussed. Research replication and extension are suggested.

Introduction: This study investigates how visual body cues in TikTok videos affect young viewers’ perceptions of body image and general eating intentions. Methods: In this study, 78 female participants viewed six messages: three without body cues and three with either thin or muscular ideal cues in a randomized order in a 2 (thin ideal versus muscular ideal) × 3 (repetition of messages) × 2 (present vs. absence) mixed factorial design. After viewing each video, self-reported eating intentions and body dissatisfaction were measured. Results: Results suggested that participants who view videos with body cues reported significantly lower eating intentions and higher body dissatisfaction. Although thin ideal cues led to higher body dissatisfaction compared to muscular ideal cues, no significant effect on eating intentions was found. Findings showed that body shape concerns significantly moderated the effects of body cues on body dissatisfaction and the effects of ideal cues on eating intentions, with individuals having higher body shape concerns experiencing more pronounced changes. Discussion: These findings indicate that comparisons to influencers’ body ideals in TikTok “What I Eat in a Day” content can lower eating intentions and heighten body dissatisfaction, particularly among young women with body image concerns. Those results highlight the need for platform policies and body image interventions that separate food content from aesthetic ideals and instead promote functional, diverse body representations

Body-worn camera and citizen device videos capturing police use-of-force are shared and commented upon widely within social media. This study investigated how point-of-view (POV: onlooker vs. officer perspective) and citizen skin color (dark skin vs. light skin), interacted to affect emotional responses, likelihood to comment and share, and comment on content. A predominantly White sample watched police use-of-force videos in which citizen skin color and camera POV varied. Body-worn camera (BWC) videos in which light-skinned citizens were harmed elicited the most likelihood to comment and share. Further, experienced negative emotion fully mediated this relationship. BWC videos in which dark-skinned citizens were harmed elicited the least negative emotion, the least likelihood to comment, and less normative commentary about officer behaviors.

This study examined the role of motivation in processing sequentially coactive content (i.e., positive leading to negative or the reverse). A motivational inhibition hypothesis was proposed to predict the processing of sequentially coactive content as a function of changes in arousing content. Results provided evidence in support of the mutual inhibitory effects between the appetitive and aversive systems during sequential coactivation and further revealed the role of change in arousing content in resource allocation during different patterns of motivational inhibition. Theoretically, this study extended previous work in offering a clarification on the boundary conditions governing the effect of proposed motivational inhibition when processing sequentially coactive content.

This study examined whether the stability of highly relevant animate and inanimate information predicted encoding. Participants (N = 149 young adults) viewed audiovisual media and completed a change detection task of screenshots taken from the viewing session. The screenshots were either left as originally viewed or a factor was altered. The factors were all motivationally (relevant to biological imperatives) and story (relevant to the ongoing narrative) relevant. Half were part of an animal and half were part of other environmental information. This was crossed with whether the information was stable or fleeting in the scene (e.g., a person’s clothing vs. their gestures). Changes to animals were more recognized than inanimate information. Changes to fleeting inanimate information were better recognized than changes to stable inanimate information. These findings indicate potential for relevant change in environmental threat and opportunity is adaptively significant and likely to increase attention and encoding across animate and inanimate categories of information.

The social facilitation of eating plays a significant role in influencing individuals’ eating decisions. However, how social eating cues are processed in health promotion messages is unclear. This study examined individuals’ food craving in response to social cues in images (Experiment 1) and emotional experiences, perceived threat, perceived efficacy, behavioral intentions, and motivational coactivation elicited by social eating cues in obesity prevention fear appeals (Experiment 2). Results suggested that the presence of a group of people eating in an image facilitated food craving for the presented foods. Moreover, fear appeals that presented obesity and its consequences with more social eating cues, versus individual eating cues, generated greater positive emotional responses, perceived threat severity, response and self-efficacy, and motivational coactivation indicating more attention and threat vigilance. However, these cues also generated fewer self-reported intentions to change unhealthy eating behaviors. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.