Intergenerational Effects of Lay Beliefs: How Parents’ Unhealthy = Tasty Intuition Influences Their Children’s Food Consumption and Body Mass Index
研究发现，父母认为不健康食物更美味的直觉会促使他们用外部奖励鼓励孩子健康饮食，反而增加孩子的不健康食物消费和身体质量指数，并提出了干预方案。
Abstract Childhood obesity is a major problem worldwide and a key contributor to adult obesity. This research explores caregivers’ lay beliefs and food parenting practices, and their long-term, intergenerational effects on their children’s food consumption and physiology. First, a cross-cultural survey reveals the link between parents’ belief that tasty food is unhealthy and the use of extrinsic rewards to encourage their children to eat healthily, with adverse downstream consequences for the children’s body mass indices. Next, two studies demonstrate the mechanism by which this strategy backfires, as providing extrinsic rewards ironically increases children’s unhealthy food consumption, which in turn leads to an increase in their body mass indices. The final two studies demonstrate potential solutions for public policy and health practitioners, either by manipulating “unhealthy = tasty” beliefs directly or by breaking the association between these food beliefs and the use of extrinsic rewards through an intervention.