Do consumers eat more when they exercise more? If so, the implications could ripple through the multi-billion dollar fitness and food industries and have implications for both consumers and health care providers. Three studies – two field experiments and one observational field study –...

Samples may guide consumer choice towards consistent products, resulting in a shopping basket that has a greater proportion of products similar to the sample. Specifically, healthy (unhealthy) samples in a grocery setting may lead to healthier (less healthy) shopping baskets. We demonstrate this...

People often behave in ways that are clearly detrimental to their health. We review representative research on unhealthy behaviors within a parsimonious framework, the Hot-Cold Decision Triangle. Through this framework, we describe how when people embrace colder state reasoning — instead of...

Objective: Each day, tens of millions of restaurant goers, conference attendees, college students, military personnel, and school children serve themselves at buffets – many being all-you-can-eat buffets. Knowing how the food order at a buffet triggers what a person selects could be useful in...

Would employee health contracts be viable for workplace health promotion (WHP)? Two studies explore the benefit and drawbacks of such a policy, as well as the standards and incentives for promoting employee health. Two studies were conducted: Study 1 is a qualitative study that collected salient...

When does a gain-framed health message work better than a loss-based one, such as a fear appeal? Although a basic summary of the literature would be inconsistent and inconclusive, a deeper focus on the individual or person-specific characteristics of the audience targeted in the studies shows a...

Why is America a land of low-calorie food claims yet high-calorie food intake? Four studies show that people are more likely to underestimate the caloric content of main dishes and to choose higher-calorie side dishes, drinks, or desserts when fast-food restaurants claim to be healthy (e.g.,...