Healthy and unhealthy social norms and food selection. Findings from a field-experiment
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The behavior of others in people's social environment (i.e., descriptive norms), as well as their opinions regarding appropriate actions (i.e., injunctive norms) strongly influence people's decisions and actions. The goal of this study was to extend prior laboratory research on the influence of social norms on food choices, by conducting a field-experiment in an on-campus food court. One of three different messages was posted on a given day: a healthy descriptive norm, healthy injunctive norm, or an unhealthy descriptive norm. Effects of these social norms messages on food choice were compared against each other and a no-message control condition. In total, 687 students reported their food choice through a questionnaire provided to them. Food choices were analyzed for participants who reported being exposed to one of the social norms signs and those in the control condition (N=220). Findings showed that the healthy descriptive norm resulted in more healthy food choices, compared to an unhealthy descriptive norm, as well as the control condition. The difference between the injunctive healthy norm and the control condition was not significant, though those in the injunctive norm condition did make more healthy decisions, than those in the unhealthy descriptive norm condition. Implications with regard to theory and practice are discussed.
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Various other studies outside the laboratory report the same overall findings across a wide range of domains.
“Moreover, there are various other studies on descriptive norms specifically venturing outside the laboratory, reporting the same kind of overall findings from a wide range of different domains (see, for example, Cialdini et al. [1990]; Mollen et al. [2013]).”
From Science Communication and the Problematic Impact of Descriptive Norms (2023) · cites this paper as Mollen et al. [2013]
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- Objective data concern the number of transactions of the salad bar and grill area the first day each sign was displayed. This was done because these data points resemble the self-reported data the most, because a single transaction reflects a single person in this case. Numbers salad choice: Injunctive #332; Healthy descriptive #357; Unhealthy descriptive #283; Control #273. Numbers burger choice: Injunctive #225; Healthy descriptive #177; Unhealthy descriptive #188; Control #148.
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- Authors
- Mollen, S., Rimal, R. N., Ruiter, R. A. C., & Kok, G.
- Affiliations
- Maastricht University (NL)
- George Washington University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Mollen, Saar
- Venue
- Appetite
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2013-06
- Volume
- 65
- Pages
- 83-89
- ISSN
- 0195-6663 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2125219736
- Cited by
- 210
- References
- 41
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 18 · 2021: 33 · 2020: 21 · 2019: 21 · 2018: 12 · 2017: 24 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 1
- FWCI
- 8.35
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Appetite (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Research Publications (Maastricht University) (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- UvA-DARE (University of Amsterdam) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- UvA-DARE (University of Amsterdam) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Research Publications (Maastricht University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Nutrition, Health and Food Behavior
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Consumer Attitudes and Food Labeling
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Behavioral Health and Interventions
- Keywords
- social norms, descriptive norms, injunctive norms, food choice, healthy eating, food court, university students, field experiments
- MeSH terms
- Attitude to Health, Diet, Female, Food Preferences, Humans, Male, Surveys and Questionnaires, Social Conformity, Social Environment, Social Values, Students, Health Behavior
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
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