INTRODUCTION

-consumers are often presented with choices involving conflicting goals: high-price/ high-quality &
low-price/ low-quality; high-risk/high-reward & low-risk/low-reward; high-price/low-involvement &
low-price/ high-involvement.

-we examine how consumers evaluate options that represent conflicting health and indulgence ( the
way they allow to treat themselves) goals, focusing on how they estimate the calorie content of
combinations of such options.

-the decision to study how people derive calorie estimates in a food consumption context is
determined by two key factors:

 most people are familiar with the concept of calories and calorie estimation is a natural
context in which to examine value-construction processes
 people's ability to estimate the calorie content has important public policy implications
 managing calorie intake= the primary method to maintain optimal body weight
 calorie overconsumption = one of the primary sources contributing to the obesity
epidemic in the US

-the calorie-related info is rarely available to consumers at the time of food selection

 even when nutritional info is available, it usually describes the calorie content per serving,
not per entire meal
 this complicates the estimation of the total calorie intake, because the packaging of most
foods and drinks involves multiple servings and consumers are typically unaware of or unable
to estimate the recommended serving size

-so how do the consumers evaluate the calorie content of individual items and how do they
integrate these estimates into an overall estimate of the calories contained into a particular meal?

-although it seems ordinary to estimate calories of a combination of food items, people show a
tendency of systematically distorting the calorie content of combinations of items

-when we evaluate combinations of items representing indulgence and health goals, consumers
tend to underestimate the calorie content

eg: choice between a lone hamburger ( indulgence) and a hamburger and a side salad ( indulgence
plus health)-> consumers tend to choose the second meal, although it contains more calories. This
choice is inconsistent with the primary goal of consuming fewer calories

-why do consumers act like this?

-because they underestimate the calorie content, so they think the second choice has less calories
than the first one

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THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
-assumption of this research: people categorize food options according to a good/bad dichotomy of
virtues and vices

eg: vegetables and fruits -> healthy-> virtues

chocolate -> indulgent food-> vices

organic, light, low-fat-> virtues

regular, whole, creamy-> vices

-many products can be represented as either vices or virtues depending on the decision context

eg: reduced-fat milk is a virtue when compared to whole milk

reduced-fat milk is a vice when compared to low-fat milk

-this classification often depends also on the characteristics of the decision maker

-another assumption: when evaluating combinations of food items that represent indulgence and
health goals, people tend to average their benefits-> they think that a combination of a virtue and a
vice is healthier than a vice alone ( BALANCING RULE)

-the absence of available calorie information makes people to rely on their impressions of a meal's
overall healthiness

->people tend to believe that healthier meals have fewer calories than unhealthy meals, so they
think that if they add items that make the meal seem healthier, they can lower the calorie content of
the meal ( even of the calorie content actually has increased)

-people have the tendency to focus on the qualitative aspects of the food items ( vice/virtue
categorization) rather than on their quantitative nature (calorie content)

- assumption: making goal-consistent decisions, such as choosing a meal containing a healthy option
(virtue), provides people with an excuse to choose unhealthy items (vice)-> when people have
satisfied a particular goal, they gain license to act in a way that is consistent with a competing goal.

EXPERIMENT 1
Goal:

the experiment is aimed to show that the combination of virtue and vice is perceived as having fewer
calories than the vice alone

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Method:

 188 people were recruited through an online service offered by Amazon

 respondents were randomly assigned to one of three conditions and asked to estimate the
caloric content of: (1) a hamburger, (2) the combination of a hamburger and a broccoli salad,
(3) the combination of a hamburger and a chocolate chip cookie
 the stimuli included the verbal descriptions and a pictorial representation
 to reduce the variance resulting from people's lack of precise calorie-content knowledge, the
respondents were shown another hamburger having 500 calories-> served as reference point
 the respondents were asked to provide numerical estimate of the caloric content of the meal
that was showed to them

Results and Discussion:

 respondents who evaluated the hamburger alone gave it a mean calorie-count rating of 761
 respondents who evaluated the calorie content of a meal comprising the same hamburger
with a salad rated the entire meal having 665 calories-> adding a salad lowered the perceived
calorie content of the entire meal by 96 calories-> this response was significant-> it supports
the notion that adding a virtue to a vice can decrease the calorie content of the combined
meal
 adding a cookie instead of the broccoli salad had the opposite effect, increasing rather than
decreasing the calorie content. the burger + cookie combination was estimated to have 859
calories-> a significant increase in the number of calories with 98 calories
 the decrease in the calorie content of the combined meal can be attributed to the vice/virtue
categorization
 another explanation: the broccoli salad had negative calories-> this assumption was tested:
a separate group of respondents from the same population was asked to estimate the caloric
content of a broccoli salad only. The data shows that the respondents perceived its calorie
content as greater than zero

EXPERIMENT 2
goal: it examines the extent of this distortion of calorie estimation regarding how strong the virtue is
(how healthy the healthy item is)

to test the impact of categorization on the averaging bias in vice/virtue combinations

method:

 respondents were 231 students, the experiment was conducted online

 they were asked to estimate the calorie content of a meal and were randomly assigned to
one of three conditions: some were shown a meal comprising a cheeseburger alone, others

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 were shown a meal comprising a cheeseburger and a Caesar salad and others were shown
the Caesar salad alone
 before that, all respondents had an initial comparison task: they had to compare the
healthiness of a Caesar salad with a reference meal. Some of the respondents were asked to
evaluate the healthiness of the Caesar salad in comparison with a broccoli salad and others
were asked to evaluate the healthiness of the Caesar salad in comparison with a black bean
chili salad.
 the rationale was: comparing the Caesar salad with a chili salad would highlight its
healthiness whereas comparing it with a broccoli salad would make the Caesar salad appeal
less healthy
 each respondent was given the initial comparison task, followed by the calorie estimation
task
 the stimuli included verbal descriptions and pictorial representations

Results:

-the Caesar salad was perceived as having less calories when compared with the chili salad than
when it was compared with the broccoli salad

-it was argued that the distortion of the calorie estimation in the first experiment was depending on
the strength of the virtue, so that when we have stronger virtues( healthier food items) in
combination with a vice, the results is a greater distortion as if there was a meal containing a vice
(unhealthy food) and a less stronger virtue ( a healthy food item that is a little less healthy)

-respondents who were initially asked to compare the caesar salad with the chili salad perceived the
subsequent meal as having fewer calories than respondents who were initially asked to compare the
Caesar salad with the broccoli salad

-however, both conditions resulted in an averaging bias, such that respondents perceived the
combined meal as having fewer calories than the sum of the individual items

EXPERIMENT 3
goal:

it aims to show that the underestimation effect should be less pronounced when people form
separate evaluation of the items

method:

 241 students, online study

 task involved estimating the calorie content of a meal
 some of the respondents were showed a meal comprising a cheeseburger and a green salad
and others a meal comprising a cheeseburger and a cheesecake

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  some participants were asked to estimate the calorie content of the entire meal, others to
estimate the calorie content of the individual components
 respondents were shown the cheeseburger-and-salad-combination and asked to estimate
the calorie content of the entire meal
 or they were asked to evaluate the calorie content of the cheeseburger and the salad
individually
 then the respondents were shown the cheeseburger -and-cake-combination and the
cheeseburger and the cake individually and asked to estimate the calorie content

Results:

-respondents in the overall evaluation condition who estimated the calorie content of a meal
comprising a vice and a virtue perceived it as having fewer calories than the respondents who
estimated the calorie contents of its individual components

-the respondents estimated the combination of the two vices to have virtually the same calorie
content
-> adding a virtue to a vice can decrease the perceived calorie content of the combined meal

-> this underestimation effect is more likely to occur when evaluating meals that comprise both
virtues and vices

EXPERIMENT 4
goal:

invoking size-based categorization should attenuate or even eliminate people's tendency to

underestimate the calorie content of combinations of vice and virtue

method:

 respondents were 214 students

 they had to estimate the calorie content of a meal
 some of them were shown a meal comprising a carrot and celery salad, some were shown a
meal comprising a cheeseburger and the rest were shown a meal comprising the celery salad
and the cheeseburger
 all respondents were initially presented with three pairs of items: a cake and an apple, a
tomato and a burger and a cookie and a kiwi
 some of the respondents were asked to indicate which item in each of the three pairs was
healthier and others were asked to indicate which was bigger
 the rationale was: health based evaluations are more likely to lead to underestimation of the
calorie content of the options, whereas size based evaluations are more likely to attenuate
the calorie underestimation effect
 each respondent was given an initial categorization task followed by a calorie estimation task

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Results:

-respondents who compared the initially presented meals according to their healthiness displayed an
averaging bias in which the meal comprising a cheeseburger and a salad had fewer calories than the
cheeseburger alone

-respondents who compared the initially presented meals by size estimated the burger/salad
combination as having significantly more calories than the cheeseburger alone

-averaging bias was significant only in the vice/virtue evaluation

-> the vice/virtue categorization accounts for the underestimation effect in evaluating combination
of items with varying degrees of healthiness

GENERAL DISCUSSION
-the theory builds on three key propositions:

1. People tend to categorize food items according to a good/bad dichotomy into vices and
virtues
2. People perceive a meal combining virtue and vice as being healthier than the vice alone
3. people rely on their evaluations of a meal's overall healthiness to speculate its calorie
content

=>

EXPERIMENT 1- documented the existence of the bias and showed that adding a virtue to a vice can
lead to a subtraction effect, such that the vice/virtue combination is perceived as having fewer
calories than the vice alone

EXPERIMENT 2-invastigated the averaging bias by documenting that it is likely to be a function of the
extremity of the virtue added to the vice and it is likely to be more pronounced in the presence of
more extreme virtues

EXPERIMENT 3- investigated the nature of the evaluation task (overall versus per piece evaluations)
on the averaging bias, documenting that it is more pronounced when people form an overall
impression of the separate components of the meal

->the averaging bias is less likely to occur when people do not form overall evaluations of the
available options, but rather consider these options separately.

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EXPERIMENT 4-examined the role of availability of alternative means for inferring calorie content,
showing that the averaging bias can be attenuated and even reversed when option size is made
salient and people use it to infer calorie content