What motivates people to consume and engage with food media on social networks? We adopt an evolutionary lens to suggest that the valence of people’s affective state varies by the implied caloric density of food media, which has a direct impact on social media engagement. First, we analyze a catalog of Buzzfeed’s Tasty videos based on nutritional content derived from the dish’s ingredients and find that visualizing caloric density (i.e., calories per serving) positively influences likes, comments, and shares on Facebook. We then replicate this phenomenon in an experiment, providing preliminary evidence for the role of affect as an explanatory mechanism. We conclude by isolating the role of affect with a classic misattribution task, which attenuates the elevated engagement resulting from exposure to calorie-dense food media. These findings contribute to the dialogue on the antecedents of social media engagement and offer implications for content developers, advertisers, consumer health advocates, and policymakers.

中文翻译：

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内容饥渴：食品媒体的营养如何影响社交媒体的参与

是什么促使人们在社交网络上消费和参与食品媒体？我们采用进化的视角来表明人们情感状态的效价因食物媒体的隐含热量密度而异，这对社交媒体的参与有直接影响。首先，我们分析一个 Buzzfeed 的Tasty目录视频基于从菜肴成分中提取的营养成分，并发现可视化卡路里密度（即每份卡路里）对 Facebook 上的点赞、评论和分享产生积极影响。然后，我们在实验中复制了这种现象，为情感作为解释机制的作用提供了初步证据。最后，我们将情感的作用与经典的错误归因任务隔离开来，这会减弱因接触高热量食物媒体而导致的参与度升高。这些发现有助于就社交媒体参与的前因进行对话，并为内容开发商、广告商、消费者健康倡导者和政策制定者提供启示。