Prejudice and the Plate: Effects of Weight Bias in Nutrition Judgments.

As millions of people turn to social media for health information, better understanding the factors that guide health-related judgments and perceptions in this context is imperative. We report on two Web experiments (n>400 total) examining the power of society's widespread weight bias and related stereotypes to influence nutrition judgments in social media spaces. In Experiment 1, meals were judged as lower in nutritional quality when the person who recommended them (the source) was depicted as obese rather than of normal weight, an effect mediated by stereotypic beliefs about the source as a generally unhealthy person. Experiment 2 replicated this effect, which--notably--remained significant when controlling for objective nutritional information (calories and fat content). Results highlight spillover effects of weight bias that extend beyond person perception to color impressions of objects (here, food) that are associated with stigmatized attributes. Implications for everyday nutrition judgments and public health are considered.

Text messaging reduces analgesic requirements during surgery.

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to determine whether communicating via short message service text message during surgery procedures leads to decreased intake of fentanyl for patients receiving regional anesthesia below the waist compared with a distraction condition and no intervention. METHODS: Ninety-eight patients receiving regional anesthesia for minor surgeries were recruited from a hospital in Montreal, QC, between January and March 2012. Patients were randomly assigned to text message with a companion, text message with a stranger, play a distracting mobile phone game, or receive standard perioperative management. Participants who were asked to text message or play a game did so before receiving the anesthetic and continued until the end of the procedure. RESULTS: The odds of receiving supplemental analgesia during surgery for patients receiving standard perioperative management were 6.77 (P=0.009; N=13/25) times the odds for patients in the text a stranger condition (N=22/25 of patients), 4.39 times the odds for those in the text a companion condition (P=0.03; N=19/23), and 1.96 times the odds for those in the distraction condition (P=0.25; N=17/25). CONCLUSION: Text messaging during surgery provides analgesic-sparing benefits that surpass distraction techniques, suggesting that mobile phones provide new opportunities for social support to improve patient comfort and reduce analgesic requirements during minor surgeries and in other clinical settings.

Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks.

Emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. Emotional contagion is well established in laboratory experiments, with people transferring positive and negative emotions to others. Data from a large real-world social network, collected over a 20-y period suggests that longer-lasting moods (e.g., depression, happiness) can be transferred through networks [Fowler JH, Christakis NA (2008) BMJ 337:a2338], although the results are controversial. In an experiment with people who use Facebook, we test whether emotional contagion occurs outside of in-person interaction between individuals by reducing the amount of emotional content in the News Feed. When positive expressions were reduced, people produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts; when negative expressions were reduced, the opposite pattern occurred. These results indicate that emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our own emotions, constituting experimental evidence for massive-scale contagion via social networks. This work also suggests that, in contrast to prevailing assumptions, in-person interaction and nonverbal cues are not strictly necessary for emotional contagion, and that the observation of others' positive experiences constitutes a positive experience for people.

The unintended consequences of disclosure: effect of manipulating sponsor identification on the perceived credibility and effectiveness of smoking cessation advertisements.

One reason that tobacco-sponsored smoking cessation ads are less effective than those sponsored by public health agencies may be that the persuasive arguments in tobacco-sponsored ads are inherently weaker than arguments made in public health ads. An alternate explanation is that sponsorship disclosure on the face of the ad activates resistance, partly because of credibility judgments directed toward tobacco companies. The authors test hypotheses in a 3 (sponsor identification) × 2 (ad content) randomized factorial experiment (N = 270). Results indicate that judgments of sponsor credibility play a mediating role in perceptions of ad effectiveness, with identification of a tobacco company as the sponsor of cessation ads undermining perceived credibility compared with the same ads without the tobacco company identified. However, the reduction in credibility resulting from tobacco sponsorship can be partially overcome when the sponsor is placed on more direct ad content (public health ads). The effects of credibility on perceived effectiveness were stronger for more ambiguous ad content and driven by participants with lower levels of involvement (nonsmokers). Credibility judgments are not as important when the ad content is more direct about the health consequences of smoking. Implications of study results for theory and public policy are explored.