If you’re in the business of getting kids choose healthy foods or just interested in behaviour change, keep reading. Researchers from the University of Vienna (Binder, Naderer & Matthes, 2019) discovered a peculiar influencer of children’s food choices – peer cues. They showed kids in different experimental groups a cartoon: the control group saw no food in the cartoon, the first experimental group saw one cartoon character eating raspberries while others didn’t, and the second experimental saw the majority of characters eating raspberries.
You’d think the last condition encouraged children to eat raspberries? After all, the kids in the group saw a majority enjoying the healthy snack. Wouldn’t that create a peer pressure effect? Apparently not so much. The kids in that experimental condition did not differ from the control group, the kids who saw no display of food in the cartoon. However, the first experimental group was the interesting one.
The children who saw only one cartoon character eat raspberries but other characters not felt an increased aversion towards raspberries. So it wasn’t so much so that the majority would create a positive desire to eat raspberries but it was the minority eating habit that created an aversion. One possible explanation is that if children see only one person out of a group eating something, they might think that there’s something wrong with the food. ”Wouldn’t everyone eat it, if it was good?”
What does it mean for marketing? The first conclusion to draw is that it’s definitely a big no to display characters where only a minority eats the healthy food you’re trying to sell. It would be better to either go with having the majority eating the chosen food or no food at all. However, the latter is obviously a little iffy – how are you going to advertise without displaying the advertised product at all?
Based on the insights of this research, the best approach for an ad is a group of characters or children eating the healthy food. In that, it might not sound revolutionary. What makes the findings important is that a minority of the group enjoying the food has a negative impact on children’s attitudes towards it. This could however be turned to an advantage. Perhaps the small minority could be eating an unhealthy food, while the majority eats healthy. The applications are numerous!
Reference:
Binder, A., Naderer, B., & Matthes, J. (2019). Do children’s food choices go with the crowd? Effects of majority and minority peer cues shown within an audiovisual cartoon on children’s healthy food choice. Social Science & Medicine, 225, 42-50. Doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.01.032