Making Each Unit Count!
Lembregts & Van Den Bergh
Healthy-left, Unhealthy-right
Romero & Biswas
Which Healthy Eating Nudges Work Best?
Cadario & Chandon
Miscellaneous
100

According to the writers of this article, which is the more discretizing unit? 

A. 500 grams of pizza

B. 2 slices of pizza

B. 2 slices of pizza.

A discretizing unit is easier to quantify, because it stimulates a representation in terms of a collection of elements 

100

What are the 2 theories behind the healthy-left and unhealthy-right effect?

Body-specificity theory: Individuals link desirable products to the dominant side

Ease of Processing: Food displays that are congruent facilitate greater ease fo processing which enhances self control

100

What type of intervention would you use and why?

- Descriptive labeling

- Evaluative labeling

- Visability enhancements

- Healthy eating calls

- Hedonic enhancements

- Convenience enhancements

- Size enhancements

100

This plate is used for children, what kind of nudge can you identify? Do you think this nudge would work?  

Behavioral nudge that makes the vegetable area bigger without making it obvious in order for children to increase their vegetable consumption. According to the study Cadario & Chandon (2020), interventions that increase healthy eating are less effective than interventions that decrease unhealthy eating. 

200

Which seems further apart, according to the writers of this article? 

A. 12 months and 36 months

B. 1 year and 3 years

Bonus: why is the perceived difference bigger?

A. The same period is quantified as bigger when using less discretizing units because of a lower evaluability.

200

Looking back at the entire study, would you consider the healthy-left/unhealthy-right a nudge? Why?

Yes, because it manipulates someone's behavior without them knowing while retaining their freedom of choice. Also, this nudge has no economic incentive. 

200

Define the 3 behavior interventions? Give examples for each. 

Cognitively oriented intervention: seeks to influence what consumers know

  • descriptive nutritional labeling: provide kcal count or info about other nutrients
  • evaluative nutritional labeling: provide nutrition info and helps consumers interpret it through color coding, adding symbols, etc.
  • visibility enhancement: informs consumers of the availability of healthy options by increasing their visibility on shelves (i.e. eye level)

Affectively oriented intervention: seeks to influence how consumers feel without changing what they know

  • hedonic enhancement: increase hedonic appeal of healthy options using hedonic description
  • healthy eating calls: encourages people to be better

Behaviorally oriented intervention: seeks to influence what consumers do without necessarily changing what they know or how they feel

  • convenience enhancements: making it physically easier for people to select healthy options
  • size enhancement: smaller plates for unhealthy options
200

Name a nudge that you've seen this week?


300

How would you present information like portion size and sugar content in a new product packaging? 

When developing a new product packaging, a company should present sugar content in sugar cubes (vs. grams) and portion sizes in units (vs. grams). 

300

What is a possible problem with implicating the results from this study?

- In the real world, there are also a lot of neutral foods that are not per se healthy or unhealthy. 

- The results may not be the same for people who read from right to left 


300

Why did the study differentiate food consumption and food selection? What did they conclude? 

Food consumption: actual food consumed 

Food selection: the purchase or selection of food in a grocery store, restaurant, or cafeteria without knowing if the food was actual consumed

No difference between food consumption and food selection which suggests that researchers or practitioners may not need to measure actual consumption to test the impact of their interventions.

300

According to these examples which ones are considered nudges and why?

  1. Sugar taxes on food products
  2. There’s a fly in my urinal
  3. Graphic images found on cigarettes
  4. Offering cooking workshops in schools
  5. Additional cost for plastic bags at stores
  6. Turning stairs into a running track


  1. Sugar taxes on food products: economic incentive
  2. There’s a fly in my urinal
  3. Graphic images found on cigarettes
  4. Offering cooking workshops in schools: don't directly change the choice of environment 
  5. Additional cost for plastic bags at stores: economic incentive 
  6. Turning stairs into a running track
400

When information is less evaluable, do people with expertise perceive greater or smaller differences than those without knowledge?

They will perceive a bigger difference. Example: students will see a bigger difference between a 2.5 GPA and a 3.6 GPA, than their grandmother.

400

What effect does the right vs left placement of food have on the amount of healthy vs unhealthy drinks consumed? 

Participants consumed a higher volume of the healthy beverage when it was placed to the left (vs. right) of the unhealthy beverage. 

400

What is a meta-analysis? What are its advantages or disadvantages?

Meta-analysis is a research process used to systematically synthesise or merge the findings of single, independent studies, using statistical methods to calculate an overall or ‘absolute’ effect.

400

You want to conduct a study that compares nudges and economic incentives and see if they can complement each other. What would be an example of a study to test this research topic?

One example could be to offer a price reduction when purchasing fresh produce in supermarkets.

500

Name one point of critique for the studies or for the overall article. 

For example:

- Lack of evidence to support innate ability 

- Same participants in the same area used in each study (very small sample size)

- Low external validity/non-generalizable 

- Result tables are unclear and complicated to understand

500

Do you think that the effect healthy-left vs unhealthy-right would be the same for left-handed people? 

No, because the body specific theory states that individuals link desirable products to the dominant side, so the effect seen would be switched (healthy-right, unhealthy-left). 

500

From this forest plot, what can be concluded?

Effectiveness of healthy eating nudges varies by intervention —> behaviorally oriented and cognitively oriented interventions are significantly different from zero

500

Imagine you work for the R&D department at Nutricia and you notice that your colleagues eat unhealthy food often from the company's cafeteria. Unfortunately, most of the food does not contain nutritional labels. What kind of nudges would you use to make your colleagues eat healthier?

- create a "traffic-light" nutritional label info 

- offer smaller plates at the cafeteria

- offer healthier options before the unhealthier food options 


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