Watching Food Advertising Seems to Trigger Automatic Eating

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If you are looking to lose a few pounds or eat healthier, you may want to think about the ads you are watching, not just the snacks you’re eyeing. There is a lot of data to suggest advertising can directly influence the brands that you choose. But can ads similarly increase consumption? And can commercials trigger this behavioral response in unsuspecting viewers?

Behavioral Priming

Researchers Jennifer L. Harris, John A. Bargh, and Kelly D. Brownwell of Yale University (2009) set out to design experiments to understand better if food commercials embedded within a television program would “prime” or directly activate an automatic increase in snack food consumption.

Behavioral priming is a phenomenon that occurs when exposure to one stimulus, e.g., a television commercial, influences a response to a subsequent stimulus, e.g., a bowl of snacks, without conscious awareness or intention.

Designing the Experiment

In the first experiment, the researchers exposed elementary-school-aged children to a cartoon show, including commercials. Before viewing, the children were given a large bowl of cheddar cheese crackers and told they could snack while enjoying the show. One test group viewed the program with commercials that contained food advertisements, and another test group saw the cartoon with commercials that did not include any food ads. The food commercials were advertisements that commonly ran in children’s television programming and promoted snack and breakfast foods of poor nutritional quality.

In the second experiment, adults watched a comedy show that included either one of the following three test conditions, 1) food ads promoting snacking, 2) food ads promoting nutrition, or 3) no food advertising. After watching the television program, researchers brought the adult participants to a separate room and asked them to rate and taste a range of healthy and unhealthy snack foods. Participants were told that they could eat as much as they liked, and then the experimenter left the room.

Measuring Unconscious Consumption

In both experiments, the researchers measured how much of the snacks the participants consumed by comparing the weights of the snacks before and after exposure to the different types of commercials.

Safeguards were taken to ensure that the behavioral effects of the food advertising were occurring outside of the participants' awareness. For example, the study replicated a natural environment where food ads might typically appear, and participants were also unaware that the purpose of the experiment was to measure how advertising influenced snacking behavior. The true nature of the investigation was further disguised because the snack food brands consumed by participants were unrelated to the snack food brands advertised on television. Researchers also eliminated the data of the few subjects who had guessed the real purpose of the experiment correctly.

To control for hunger, the experiments occurred during similar times of the day. The television viewers were also asked to report how hungry they were and when they had eaten last to help ensure that the snack consumption measures observed were ad-induced rather than hunger-related.

Food Ads Appear to Prime Automatic Snacking

The study found that the children consumed 45% more snacks when exposed to commercials for food advertising. Adults exposed to snack food advertising consumed more of both unhealthy and healthy snack foods than the other conditions, i.e., no food ads or food ads promoting nutrition. These behavioral responses to advertising were not related to conscious intention or reported hunger.

Watch and Snack at Your Own Risk

If you are the type of person that likes to snack while watching television, maybe you should surround yourself with carrots and celery sticks instead of potato chips and pretzels. And if you love to eat less healthy snacks, perhaps you should opt for the streaming television service without the ads. They cost a few extra dollars, but you might avoid gaining a few extra pounds.