Consumer advocates and regulators champion the view that transparent labeling practices will help consumers make better decisions. However, it is unclear how unnatural nutritional claims (e.g., artificial ingredients, food additives, genetically modified organisms) affect perceptions of packaged food. Many researchers have cautioned that such labels can be commonly misinterpreted and can further stigmatize food produced by conventional processes. Building on the selective accessibility model, we propose that unnatural nutritional claims on front-of-package food labeling may induce a negative health halo effect. Accessibility of information consistent with a target concept (e.g., a claim on a food label) shapes consumer inferences and evaluations of an associated product (e.g., the packaged food) in the same direction. We propose that such nutritional claims can lead to higher calorie estimates and therefore biased food decisions. Furthermore, we examine the moderating effect of dispositional critical thinking, priming opposing beliefs, and activating causal reasoning to help mitigate on the negative health halo. We test these predictions across five experiments. Together, these findings advance our understanding of the halo effect, inference, and persuasion, and they suggest strategies for helping consumers make more informed health-related judgments and decisions.

中文翻译：

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不自然不健康吗？想一想：克服食品标签带来的负面光环效应

消费者权益倡导者和监管机构支持这样一种观点，即透明的标签做法将有助于消费者做出更好的决定。然而，目前尚不清楚非天然营养声称（例如，人工成分、食品添加剂、转基因生物）如何影响对包装食品的看法。许多研究人员警告说，此类标签通常会被误解，并可能进一步污名化传统工艺生产的食品。基于选择性可及性模型，我们提出包装正面食品标签上的非自然营养声明可能会导致负面的健康光环效应。与目标概念（例如，食品标签上的声明）一致的信息的可访问性会在同一方向上影响消费者对相关产品（例如，包装食品）的推断和评估。我们建议，此类营养声明会导致更高的卡路里估计值，从而导致食物决策出现偏差。此外，我们研究了性格批判性思维、激发对立信念和激活因果推理的调节作用，以帮助减轻负面的健康光环。我们在五个实验中测试了这些预测。总之，这些发现促进了我们对光环效应、推理和说服的理解，并提出了帮助消费者做出更明智的与健康相关的判断和决定的策略。我们在五个实验中测试了这些预测。总之，这些发现促进了我们对光环效应、推理和说服的理解，并提出了帮助消费者做出更明智的与健康相关的判断和决定的策略。我们在五个实验中测试了这些预测。总之，这些发现促进了我们对光环效应、推理和说服的理解，并提出了帮助消费者做出更明智的与健康相关的判断和决定的策略。