Promoting health or promoting pleasure? A contingency approach to the effect of informational and emotional appeals on food liking and consumption

Here, we suggest that the relative effectiveness of informational and emoti onal appeals in persuasive communications may depend on the dominant basis of attitude towards the focal item (affective or cognitive), and on the pre cise response being targeted (i.e. influencing affect-based food liking or cognitive-based consumption). Ninety-five participants (milk drinking adult s) participated in an experiment in which they were presented with a persua sive communication promoting milk consumption. A mixed design combined as b etween-participants Factors attitude bases (two: affective/cognitive) and p ersuasive appeals (two: informational/emotional) with, as a within-particip ants measure, types of effect (two: liking and consumption change intent). We also measured immediate feelings and thoughts responses to the communica tion. As expected, cognition-based attitudes were not sensitive to a match between persuasive appeals and types of effect. For affect-based attitudes, results confirmed the predicted superiority of a match between the affecti ve and cognitive bases of the targeted responses and that of the persuasive appeal. Food liking was particularly sensitive to an emotional appeal whil e an informational appeal tended to be more influential on food consumption . The underlying mechanism of these effects and their implication for the p ractice of health promotion and food marketing are discussed. (C) 2000 Acad emic Press.