“This Isn’t So Bad”: Assimilation, Contrast, and Self Control on Healthiness Perceptions

Assimilation and contrast effects play an important role in the way consumers make judgments (Parducci 1992; Schwarz and Bless 1992b). The order of information, in particular, may have a contextual influence on the way we evaluate (Schwarz and Bless 1992a). In the present research, we examine how assimilation and contrast effects might manifest differently in food consumption related situations. Across three studies, we examine contextual order effects and test our hypothesis that these effects are moderated by self-control, facilitating better overall patterns of consumption for individuals higher in self-control. We show that prior exposure to healthy or indulgent food options impacts consumer evaluations of healthiness for subsequent options differently at varying levels of self-control. Comparative evaluations and order effects are critical to our understanding of consumer judgments and choice. Our research contributes to this knowledge by examining the role of self-control in goal contexts with sequential exposure to different foods. Research on order effects has identified highlighting and balancing behaviors toward pursuit of self-regulation goals (Dhar and Simonson 1999). For example, a dieter may balance an unhealthy lunch by eating a healthy dinner or vice versa. The present research examines judgments about the ambiguously healthy foods that may lead individuals with low self-control to use strategies such as highlighting and balancing ineffectively or categorizing alternatives in a manner that negatively impacts the pursuit of health goals (Poynor and Haws 2009). Specifically, we hypothesize that people with lower self-control will assimilate their perceptions of healthiness for ambiguously healthy options following exposure to healthy foods and contrast after unhealthy foods. This behavior broadens the number of acceptably healthy choices available. For those high in self-control, we expect the opposite pattern to emerge and impede goal-inconsistent choices.