Health halo effect with experimentally induced valence through evaluative conditioning

The health halo effect is supposed to be driven by the positive valence of an unrelated dimension that influences, for instance, calorie judgments (leading to lower calorie judgments for a product). To test this idea, authors relied on labels supposedly unrelated to the calorie content of a product, starting from “low-fat” to “Fair trade”. By doing so, they have tried to move away as much as possible from labels that could involve rational reasoning by participants finding links none of which were a priori presumed by researchers. Another way around this issue, however, would be to investigate whether inducing positive (or negative) valence in an unknown label results in a health halo effect. Specifically, we ought to demonstrate that individuals can make unwarranted inferences about a product (e.g., regarding the calorie content) because of a label affixed on its packaging, while also controlling that even then they do not find a rational enabling to link the label and calorie content. To achieve all this, we will use novel labels (i.e., logos that participants have never seen before and that do not provide any nutrient information) and we will use an evaluative conditioning procedure to induce valence in the logos. In this study, a logo of the “positively conditioned” condition will be associated with 8 positive images (80%) and 2 negative images (20%), each presented twice and in a random order. Conversely, a logo of the “negatively conditioned” condition will be associated with 8 negative and 2 positive images. After that, participants will have to evaluate the calorie content of a chocolate bar on which one of the logos (either the positively or the negatively conditioned one) is displayed. Then, they will have to explain in a few words what they relied on to evaluate the calorie content of the product.