Graphic, Affective, and Effective

Sodas and soft drinks at a Supermarket

Source: Marlith (27 June 2008; Wikimedia Commons; CC-BY-SA-3.0)

As we embark on the new year, many of us will be mindful of recent gluttony during the festive season. We’ll be looking to restart without so much of the rich, savory, and sweet foods we’ve consumed and the pleasant but unhealthful drinks we’ve imbibed. At first, this change in behavior will be easy, fueled by stored calories and self-determination. As time passes, however, we all tend to need a little help.

One formidable obstacle for many is the prevalence of sugary drinks. Abundant research has connected over-consumption of these drinks with adverse health, but people around the world are hooked on these diluted syrups. As with so many tempting products, this issue is a classic heart-mind problem in research on attitudes and attitude change. Our affective reactions to sweet beverages can be very positive, making it awkward to hold cognitive reactions that are very negative. It’s hard to deal with “tastes great!” at the same time as “can end my life early."

For decades, researchers have wondered if the most effective route to intervention in such situations is to emphasize the affective component of attitude. What if we could help people by replacing the pleasant feelings linked with sugary drinks, at least temporarily, with a feeling that is more distressing? That is, rather than give them plain warnings that emphasize bad facts about the beverages, we might give them affect-inducing warnings that emphasize bad emotional experiences from consuming the beverages.

A recent field study demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach. At a hospital cafeteria in Massachusetts, scientists at Harvard University added labels near sugary drinks over successive two-week intervals (Donnelly, Zatz, Svirsky, & John, 2018). The labels either presented facts about the calories contained, text warnings about the effects of sugar on diabetes, obesity, and tooth decay, or emotive, graphic labels showing pictures of putative effects on diabetes, obesity, and tooth decay (e.g., a needle being inserted into a fatty area of the stomach).

The researchers tracked the purchases of the sugary drinks during these labelling periods and compared the purchasing rates with a non-intervention week. Their analyses revealed that the graphic labels were associated with lower consumption of the sugary drinks and higher consumption of water, whereas the cognitive, factual labels and warnings did not yield any reliable effects. Together with other findings, these results suggested that the affective warnings made the cafeteria’s patrons more mindful of the health impacts, which reduced their willingness to consume the sugary drinks.

As with past evidence obtained for effects of graphic imagery on cigarette packets (see Noar et al., 2016), these findings suggest that affective messaging is an important tool in helping to deal with the heart-mind conflicts we face for tempting products that are bad for us. As we work toward transforming our healthy New Year's resolutions into reality, it’s worth reminding ourselves that we need a little help from our environments. Perhaps emotion-focused labelling is one environmental cue that can help.