Is unnatural unhealthy? Think about it: Overcoming negative halo effects from food labels
研究提出食品标签上的“非天然”声明（如人工成分、添加剂）会引发负面健康光环效应，导致消费者高估热量并做出偏差决策，并探讨了批判性思维等缓解策略。
Abstract Consumer advocates and regulators champion the view that transparent labeling practices will help consumers make better decisions. However, it is unclear how unnatural nutritional claims (e.g., artificial ingredients, food additives, genetically modified organisms) affect perceptions of packaged food. Many researchers have cautioned that such labels can be commonly misinterpreted and can further stigmatize food produced by conventional processes. Building on the selective accessibility model, we propose that unnatural nutritional claims on front‐of‐package food labeling may induce a negative health halo effect. Accessibility of information consistent with a target concept (e.g., a claim on a food label) shapes consumer inferences and evaluations of an associated product (e.g., the packaged food) in the same direction. We propose that such nutritional claims can lead to higher calorie estimates and therefore biased food decisions. Furthermore, we examine the moderating effect of dispositional critical thinking, priming opposing beliefs, and activating causal reasoning to help mitigate on the negative health halo. We test these predictions across five experiments. Together, these findings advance our understanding of the halo effect, inference, and persuasion, and they suggest strategies for helping consumers make more informed health‐related judgments and decisions.