Processing Food Advertisements: Initial Biological Responses Matter

Skin Conductance Responses Indicate Children are Physiologically Aroused by Their Favourite Branded Food and Drink Products

“…The most interesting finding was that there was evidence of a significant difference in children’s arousal when viewing branded food and beverage products compared to their unpackaged counterparts. The responsiveness to products in their branded packaging versus the actual product unpackaged was identified despite evidence that unpackaged foods can be perceived as more accessible, directly appetitive and have previously shown better physiological appetitive responses than packaged products [38]. This novel discovery supports the notion that children may have an emotional relationship with their favourite brands, which is a result of branding and marketing and is less determined by the product itself.…”

“…The implementation of a physiological measure illuminated another dimension to the response that children have with branded food and beverages. This study demonstrated that branded products generate an implicit response, greater than that of an unembellished food cue, a usually more appetising and biologically motivating food cue [38]. This response suggests that powerful marketing techniques have guided and fostered strong connections with children.…”

“…Therefore, images of the participant’s friends and family were included in the study as an assumed existing emotional response to act as a guide to compare to in determining if there was an emotional response to the branded products. The same products, unpackaged, which are considered more directly appetitive and ‘ready-to-eat’ than foods in their packaging [38], were also included to compare to. If the findings showed a stronger response for the branded products, then this could indicate a learned response facilitated by food marketing.…”

The limited capacity model of motivated mediated message processing: meta-analytically summarizing two decades of research

“…Behavioral measures are not limited to, but include secondary task reaction time (Clayton, Leshner, Sanders-Jackson, & Hendrickse, 2020;Lang et al, 2006;Lang & Basil, 1998) and signal detection (Shapiro, 1994) procedures. Psychophysiological measures include heart rate (Clayton, Lang, Leshner, & Quick, 2019;Keene, Clayton, Berke, Loof, & Bolls, 2017), skin conductance (Clayton, Keene, Leshner, Lang, & Bailey, 2020;Wang, Morey, & Srivastava, 2012), and facial electromyography at the corrugator supercilii muscle region (Leshner, Clayton, Bolls, & Bhandari, 2018;Rubenking & Lang, 2014), orbicularis oculi (Bailey, 2015(Bailey, , 2016 and zygomaticus major muscle region (Wang & Lang, 2012;Yegiyan & Bailey, 2016). A small handful of studies have investigated the neural basis of the LC4MP using electroencephalography (Stróżak & Francuz, 2016) or functional magnetic resonance imaging (Huskey, Mangus, Turner, & Weber, 2017;Seelig, et al, 2014); however, too few of these studies exist for conducting a meta-analysis, and therefore these approaches are excluded from further consideration in the present study.…”

Primary Biological Motivators in Food Advertisements: Energy Density and Sexual Appeals Compete for Appetitive Motivational Activation

“…Among this class of motivationally relevant content is a limited category of items called primary biological motivators, which deal directly with survival (i.e., threat, wounds, illness), energy conservation (i.e., food, shelter), and procreation (i.e., sexual stimuli; Bradley et al, 2001). Motivationally relevant content also includes emotional contexts (e.g., light vs. dark), social cues (e.g., happy vs. angry facial expressions), and objects that present opportunities or threats based on current needs of the viewer (e.g., fire, weapons, animals; A. Lang & Bailey, 2015).…”