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.,...

Effective and simple screening tools are needed to detect behaviors that are established early in life and have a significant influence on weight gain later in life. Crowdsourcing could be a novel and potentially useful tool to assess childhood predictors of adult obesity. This exploratory study...

Our dilemma with health claims is that too much information can confuse consumers and too little information can mislead them. A controlled study is used to examine the effectiveness of various front-sided health claims when used in combination with a full health claim on the back of a package....