Abstract
Abstract. Empirical evidence suggests that the color red acts like an implicit avoidance cue in food contexts. Thus specific colors seem to guide the implicit evaluation of food items. We built upon this research by investigating the implicit meaning of color (red vs. green) in an approach-avoidance task with healthy and unhealthy food items. Thus, we examined the joint evaluative effects of color and food: Participants had to categorize food items by approach-avoidance reactions, according to their healthfulness. Items were surrounded by task-irrelevant red or green circles. We found that the implicit meaning of the traffic light colors influenced participants’ reactions to the food items. The color red (compared to green) facilitated automatic avoidance reactions to unhealthy foods. By contrast, approach behavior toward healthy food items was not moderated by color. Our findings suggest that traffic light colors can act as implicit cues that guide automatic behavioral reactions to food.
References
(2010). Traffic lights and food choice: A choice experiment examining the relationship between nutritional food labels and price. Food Policy, 35, 211–220. doi: 10.1016/j.foodpol.2009.12.005
(1992). Environmental color, consumer feelings, and purchase likelihood. Psychology and Marketing, 9, 347–363. doi: 10.1002/mar.4220090502
(2009). Attentional and approach biases for pictorial food cues. Influence of external eating. Appetite, 52, 299–306. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2008.10.007
(2013). The effect of the color red on consuming food does not depend on achromatic (Michelson) contrast and extends to rubbing cream on the skin. Appetite, 71, 307–313. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2013.08.012
(1999). Consequences of automatic evaluation: Immediate behavioral predispositions to approach or avoid the stimulus. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 215–224. doi: 10.1177/0146167299025002007
(1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. doi: 10.4324/9780203771587
(2005). Explicit and implicit attitudes towards food and physical activity in childhood obesity. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 43, 1111–1120. doi: 10.1016/j.brat.2004.07.007
(2013). Anticipatory control of approach and avoidance: An ideomotor approach. Emotion Review, 5, 275–279. doi: 10.1177/1754073913477505
(2008). When do motor behaviors (mis)match affective stimuli? An evaluative coding view of approach and avoidance reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137, 262–281. doi: 10.1037/0096-3445.137.2.262
(2013). Women’s use of red clothing as a sexual signal in intersexual interaction. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49, 599–602. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2012.10.001
(2007). Color and psychological functioning. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 250–254. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8721.2007.00514.x
(2008). Romantic red: Red enhances men’s attraction to women. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1150–1164. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.95.5.1150
(2007). GPower 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 175–191. doi: 10.3758/BF03193146
(2011). The influence of red on perceptions of relative dominance and threat in a competitive context. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 33, 308–314.
(2012). The color red reduces snack food and soft drink intake. Appetite, 58, 699–702. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2011.12.023
(2011). Heuristic decision making. Annual Review of Psychology, 62, 451–482. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346
(2007). A review of European research on consumer response to nutrition information on food labels. Journal of Public Health, 15, 385–399. doi: 10.1007/s10389-007-0101-9
(2010). Guilty pleasures. Implicit preferences for high calorie food in restrained eating. Appetite, 55, 18–24. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2010.03.003
(2012). Red light, green light: Color priming in financial decisions. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 41, 738–745. doi: 10.1016/j.socec.2012.07.003
(2014). Healthy food decision making in response to traffic light color-coded nutrition labeling. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 33, 65–77. doi: 10.1509/jppm.12.091
(2013). On the nature of automatically triggered approach-avoidance behavior. Emotion Review, 5, 280–284. doi: 10.1177/1754073913477501
(2012). Fertile green: Green facilitates creative performance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 784–797. doi: 10.1177/0146167212436611
(2009). Context specificity of implicit preferences: The case of human preference for red. Emotion, 9, 734–738. doi: 10.1037/a0016818
(2009). Blue or red? Exploring the effect of color on cognitive task performances. Science, 323, 1226–1229. doi: 10.1037/e621092012-121
(2012). Color in context: Psychological context moderates the influence of red on approach- and avoidance-motivated behavior. PLoS One, 7, 1–5. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0040333
(2009). Basic hue-meaning associations. Emotion, 9, 898–902. doi: 10.1037/a0017811
(2009). Who likes it more? Restrained eaters’ implicit attitudes towards food. Appetite, 53, 279–287. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2009.07.001
(2014). Threatening Joy: Approach and avoidance behaviors to emotions are influenced by the group membership of the expresser. Cognition & Emotion, 28, 656–677. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2013.849659
(2010).
Implicit social cognition and indirect measures in consumer behavior . In B. GawronskiB. PayneEds., Handbook of implicit social cognition: Measurement, theory, and applications (pp. 535–547). New York, NY: Guilford Press.(2005). Environmental influences on food choice, physical activity and energy balance. Physiology & Behavior, 86, 603–613. doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2005.08.051
(2002). Implicit and explicit attitudes toward high-fat foods in obesity. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 111, 517–521. doi: 10.1037/0021-843X.111.3.517
(2006). The environment influences whether high-fat foods are associated with palatable or with unhealthy. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44, 715–736. doi: 10.1016/j.brat.2005.05.007
(2013). Does green mean healthy? Nutrition label color affects perceptions of healthfulness. Health Communication, 28, 814–821. doi: 10.1080/10410236.2012.725270
(2013). Romantic red revisited: Red enhances men’s attraction to young, but not menopausal women. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49, 161–164. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2012.08.004
(2005). Dominance, status signals and coloration in male mandrils (Mandrillus sphinx). Ethology, 111, 25–50. doi: 10.1111/j.1439-0310.2004.01054.x
(1960). Latency of instrumental responses as a function of compatibility with the meaning of eliciting verbal signs. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 59, 239–245. doi: 10.1037/h0047274
(2011). Eating green. Consumers’ willingness to adopt ecological food consumption behaviors. Appetite, 57, 674–682. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2011.08.010
(2010). Restrained eaters show enhanced automatic approach tendencies towards food. Appetite, 55, 30–36. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2010.03.007
(2011). Reduced automatic motivational orientation towards food in restricting anorexia nervosa. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 120, 708–718. doi: 10.1037/a0023926
(2000). Automatic vigilance: The attention-grabbing power of approach- and avoidance-related social information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 1024–1037. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.78.6.1024
(2010).
Implicit cognition in health psychology: Why common sense goes out the window . In B. GawronskiB. K. PayneEds., Handbook of implicit social cognition: Measurement, theory, and applications (pp. 463–488). New York, NY: Guilford Press.(1997). Introduction to robust estimation and hypothesis testing. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
(2009). The habitual consumer. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 19, 579–592. doi: 10.1016/j.jcps.2009.08.003
(1974). The two-sample trimmed t for unequal population variances. Biometrika, 61, 165–170. doi: 10.2307/2334299
