IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nathum/v3y2019i6d10.1038_s41562-019-0586-6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A values-alignment intervention protects adolescents from the effects of food marketing

Author

Listed:
  • Christopher J. Bryan

    (University of Chicago Booth School of Business)

  • David S. Yeager

    (University of Texas at Austin)

  • Cintia P. Hinojosa

    (University of Chicago Booth School of Business)

Abstract

Adolescents are exposed to extensive marketing for junk food, which drives overconsumption by creating positive emotional associations with junk food1–6. Here we counter this influence with an intervention that frames manipulative food marketing as incompatible with important adolescent values, including social justice and autonomy from adult control. In a preregistered, longitudinal, randomized, controlled field experiment, we show that this framing intervention reduces boys’ and girls’ implicit positive associations with junk food marketing and substantially improves boys’ daily dietary choices in the school cafeteria. Both of these effects were sustained for at least three months. These findings suggest that reframing unhealthy dietary choices as incompatible with important values could be a low-cost, scalable solution to producing lasting, internalized change in adolescents’ dietary attitudes and choices.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher J. Bryan & David S. Yeager & Cintia P. Hinojosa, 2019. "A values-alignment intervention protects adolescents from the effects of food marketing," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 3(6), pages 596-603, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:nathum:v:3:y:2019:i:6:d:10.1038_s41562-019-0586-6
    DOI: 10.1038/s41562-019-0586-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0586-6
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41562-019-0586-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alan C. Logan & Susan H. Berman & Brian M. Berman & Susan L. Prescott, 2021. "Healing Anthropocene Syndrome: Planetary Health Requires Remediation of the Toxic Post-Truth Environment," Challenges, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-25, January.
    2. Edwina Mingay & Melissa Hart & Serene Yoong & Alexis Hure, 2021. "Why We Eat the Way We Do: A Call to Consider Food Culture in Public Health Initiatives," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(22), pages 1-10, November.
    3. Grady, Christopher & Iannantuoni, Alice & Winters, Matthew S., 2021. "Influencing the means but not the ends: The role of entertainment-education interventions in development," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    4. Brian Hughes & Cynthia Miller-Idriss & Rachael Piltch-Loeb & Beth Goldberg & Kesa White & Meili Criezis & Elena Savoia, 2021. "Development of a Codebook of Online Anti-Vaccination Rhetoric to Manage COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(14), pages 1-18, July.
    5. Guilhem Lecouteux, 2020. "Welfare Economics in Large Worlds: Welfare and Public Policies in an Uncertain Environment," GREDEG Working Papers 2020-08, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    6. Alan C. Logan & Christopher R. D’Adamo & Susan L. Prescott, 2023. "The Founder: Dispositional Greed, Showbiz, and the Commercial Determinants of Health," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(9), pages 1-20, April.
    7. Dixon, Helen & Scully, Maree & Wakefield, Melanie & Kelly, Bridget & Pettigrew, Simone & Chapman, Kathy & Niederdeppe, Jeff, 2020. "Can counter-advertising protect spectators of elite sport against the influence of unhealthy food and beverage sponsorship? A naturalistic trial," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 266(C).
    8. Robertson, Deirdre & Andersson, Ylva & Lavin, Ciarán & Lunn, Pete, 2023. "Comparing expert and public perceptions of the obesity epidemic in 3 countries," Papers WP768, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    9. Brian Hughes & Kesa White & Jennifer West & Meili Criezis & Cindy Zhou & Sarah Bartholomew, 2021. "Cultural Variance in Reception and Interpretation of Social Media COVID-19 Disinformation in French-Speaking Regions," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(23), pages 1-28, November.
    10. Daria Loginova & Stefan Mann, 2024. "Sweet home or battle of the sexes: who dominates food purchasing decisions?," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-10, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nathum:v:3:y:2019:i:6:d:10.1038_s41562-019-0586-6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.