סמינר בשיווק

Title:  Beliefs, Behaviors, and Body Mass

Anirban Mukhopadhyay from HKUST

Abstract: This talk will cover an ongoing program of research into effects of laypeople’s beliefs about food. The first part of the talk will focus on beliefs about the causes of obesity.  Medical research consensus is that a poor diet is a much greater determinant of obesity than lack of exercise. However, our primary research shows that only about half of lay people believe that diet is the primary cause of obesity. People who mistakenly underestimate the role of a poor diet, and instead implicate insufficient exercise, have higher body mass indices (“BMI”) and are more likely to be overweight than people who correctly believe that it is the primary cause of obesity. Across four papers, we study these misperceptions and trace them to “leanwashing” by marketers of processed food and beverages, specifically, their lobbying, public relations, and corporate social responsibility campaigns, and make recommendations about possible corrective actions. The second part of the talk will move to a different lay belief, namely, that unhealthy foods are tasty (the “Unhealthy=Tasty Intuition” or “UTI”; Raghunathan et al., 2006). One paper demonstrates a positive effect of UTI on BMI across several countries, and ongoing research finds intergenerational effects of parents’ beliefs in UTI on their children’s BMI. Evidence indicates that parents’ UTI positively influences their children’s BMI because extrinsic rewards are used to encourage healthy eating, ironically reducing children’s healthy food consumption.