越美越健康?食物美感对消费者健康感知的影响

doi:10.3724/SP.J.1041.2025.0883

摘要/Abstract

摘要：

随着经济发展与人民生活水平的提高, 消费者越来越重视食物健康。本研究探讨食物美感对消费者的食物健康感知与选择的影响。通过5项实验发现：(1)与正常美感相比, 消费者认为高美感的食物更不健康; (2)这是因为高美感激活了与享乐有关的心理表征, 导致消费者将高美感食物与不健康相关联; (3)通过人为切断“享乐=不健康”的直觉信念, 高美感对食物健康感知的负面影响被削弱; (4)当消费者的健康目标被启动之后, 他们对高美感食物的偏好会下降。本研究的发现对于食物营销和美感相关的研究具有重要的理论和实践意义。

关键词: 食物健康感知, 美感, 享乐联想, 直觉信念

Abstract:

In recent years, the impact of food aesthetics on consumer perceptions and preferences has garnered significant attention. Previous studies have largely demonstrated a “what is beautiful is good” effect, revealing that consumers favor foods with visually appealing features (e.g., symmetry, uniformity) while devaluing those with aesthetic flaws (e.g., deformities, blemishes). However, does beauty necessarily equate to healthiness? This research explores how high (versus normal) aesthetic appeal in food influences consumer perceptions, particularly regarding food healthiness. We propose that highly aesthetic foods evoke associations with hedonism and indulgence. Since indulgent foods are often perceived as unhealthy, consumers may view highly aesthetic foods as less healthy compared to those with standard appearances.
Five studies were conducted to test these hypotheses. Studies 1A, 1B, and 1C (each N = 200) employed a one-way between-subjects design (food appearance: highly aesthetic vs. normal) across various food types (cupcake, steamed bun, banana toast). These studies examined the main effect of food appearance on healthiness perception, the mediating role of hedonism, and ruled out alternative explanations such as taste, price, freshness, and food processing. Study 2 (N = 220, cookie) utilized a moderation approach to further investigate the role of the hedonism-unhealthiness association. Study 3 (N = 100, Osmanthus Cake) examined the downstream consequences of healthiness perceptions induced by food appearance, with or without priming a health goal.
The key findings are as follows: (1) Compared to foods with normal appearances, highly aesthetic foods evoke stronger associations with hedonism, which subsequently reduces perceived healthiness. (2) Disrupting the intuitive belief that “pleasure equals unhealthiness” mitigates the negative effect of high aesthetic appeal on healthiness perception. (3) When participants were primed with a health goal, their likelihood of choosing highly aesthetic (vs. normal-looking) food decreased, driven by reduced perceptions of healthiness.
This research challenges the pervasive belief that “what is beautiful is good” by demonstrating that excessive aesthetic appeal in food can backfire, reducing its perceived healthiness. For food marketers, these insights underscore the importance of balancing aesthetic appeal with health-related messaging, especially when promoting products positioned as healthy options.

Key words: food aesthetics, healthiness perception, hedonism priming, intuitive belief

中图分类号:

B849: F713.55

郑晓莹, 郑丽菁, 刘春蕾, 韩寒. (2025). 越美越健康?食物美感对消费者健康感知的影响. 心理学报, 57(5), 883-895.

ZHENG Xiaoying, ZHENG Lijing, LIU Chunlei, HAN Han. (2025). Too pretty to be healthy? The influence of food aesthetics on consumer perception of food healthiness. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 57(5), 883-895.

图/表 2

参考文献 64

[1]	Aggarwal, P., & McGill, A. L. (2012). When brands seem human, do humans act like brands? Automatic behavioral priming effects of brand anthropomorphism. Journal of Consumer Research, 39(2), 307-323.
[2]	Behrens, R. R. (1998). Art, design and gestalt theory. Leonardo, 31(4), 299-303.
[3]	Bettman, J. R., Luce, M. F., & Payne, J. W. (1998). Constructive consumer choice processes. Journal of Consumer Research, 25(3), 187-217.
[4]	Bloch, P. H., Brunel, F. F., & Arnold, T. J. (2003). Individual differences in the centrality of visual product aesthetics: Concept and measurement. Journal of Consumer Research, 29(4), 551-565.
[5]	Bucher, T., Müller, B., & Siegrist, M. (2015). What is healthy food? Objective nutrient profile scores and subjective lay evaluations in comparison. Appetite, 95, 408-414. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2015.08.005 pmid: 26256557
[6]	Chan, E., & Zhang, L. S. (2022). Is this food healthy? The impact of lay beliefs and contextual cues on food healthiness perception and consumption. Current Opinion in Psychology, 46, 101348.
[7]	Chignell, A., & Costelloe, T. M. (2011). A dialogue concerning aesthetics and apolaustics. Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 9(1), v-xvi.
[8]	Cho, H., & Schwarz, N. (2008). Of great art and untalented artists: Effort information and the flexible construction of judgmental heuristics. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 18(3), 205-211.
[9]	Cox, D., & Cox, A. D. (2002). Beyond first impressions: The effects of repeated exposure on consumer liking of visually complex and simple product designs. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 30(2), 119-130.
[10]	Custers, R., & Aarts, H. (2010). The unconscious will: How the pursuit of goals operates outside of conscious awareness. Science, 329(5987), 47-50. doi: 10.1126/science.1188595 pmid: 20595607
[11]	De Hooge, I. E., Oostindjer, M., Aschemann-Witzel, J., Normann, A., Loose, S. M., & Almli, V. L. (2017). This apple is too ugly for me!: Consumer preferences for suboptimal food products in the supermarket and at home. Food Quality and Preference, 56, 80-92.
[12]	Deval, H., Mantel, S. P., Kardes, F. R., & Posavac, S. S. (2013). How naive theories drive opposing inferences from the same information. Journal of Consumer Research, 39(6), 1185-1201.
[13]	Dhar, R., & Simonson, I. (1999). Making complementary choices in consumption episodes: Highlighting versus balancing. Journal of Marketing Research, 36(1), 29-44.
[14]	Faro, D., McGill, A. L., & Hastie, R. (2010). Naïve theories of causal force and compression of elapsed time judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(5), 683-701. doi: 10.1037/a0019261 pmid: 20438218
[15]	Fenko, A., Lotterman, H., & Galetzka, M. (2016). What’s in a name? The effects of sound symbolism and package shape on consumer responses to food products. Food Quality and Preference, 51, 100-108.
[16]	Finkelstein, S. R., & Fishbach, A. (2010). When healthy food makes you hungry. Journal of Consumer Research, 37(3), 357-367.
[17]	Fishbach, A., Friedman, R. S., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2003). Leading us not into temptation: Momentary allurements elicit overriding goal activation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 296-309. pmid: 12585805
[18]	Fitzsimons, G. M., Chartrand, T. L., & Fitzsimons, G. J. (2008). Automatic effects of brand exposure on motivated behavior: How apple makes you “think different”. Journal of Consumer Research, 35(1), 21-35.
[19]	Gao, L., Li, Y., & Wyer Jr, R. S. (2016). Choosing between two evils: The determinants of preferences for two equally goal-inconsistent options. Journal of Consumer Research, 42(6), 1002-1012.
[20]	Grewal, L., Hmurovic, J., Lamberton, C., & Reczek, R. W. (2019). The self-perception connection: Why consumers devalue unattractive produce. Journal of Marketing, 83(1), 89-107. doi: 10.1177/0022242918816319
[21]	Hagen, L. (2021). Pretty healthy food: How and when aesthetics enhance perceived healthiness. Journal of Marketing, 85(2), 129-145.
[22]	Hagtvedt, H., & Patrick, V. M. (2008). Art infusion: The influence of visual art on the perception and evaluation of consumer products. Journal of Marketing Research, 45(3), 379-389.
[23]	Hagtvedt, H., & Patrick, V. M. (2014). Consumer response to overstyling: Balancing aesthetics and functionality in product design. Psychology & Marketing, 31(7), 518-525.
[24]	Haws, K. L., Reczek, R. W., & Sample, K. L. (2017). Healthy diets make empty wallets: The healthy= expensive intuition. Journal of Consumer Research, 43(6), 992-1007.
[25]	Huang, L., & Lu, J. (2015). Eat with your eyes: Package color influences the expectation of food taste and healthiness moderated by external eating. Marketing Management, 25(2), 71-87.
[26]	Hung, I. W., & Wyer Jr, R. S. (2008). The impact of implicit theories on responses to problem-solving print advertisements. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 18(3), 223-235.
[27]	Kramer, T., Irmak, C., Block, L. G., & Ilyuk, V. (2012). The effect of a no-pain, no-gain lay theory on product efficacy perceptions. Marketing Letters, 23, 517-529.
[28]	Lacey, S., Hagtvedt, H., Patrick, V. M., Anderson, A., Stilla, R., Deshpande, G., ... Sathian, K. (2011). Art for reward’s sake: Visual art recruits the ventral striatum. Neuroimage, 55(1), 420-433.
[29]	Lavie, T., & Noam, T. (2004). Assessing dimensions of perceived visual aesthetics of web sites. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 60(3), 269-298.
[30]	Lee, H. C., Chang, C. T., Cheng, Z. H., & Chen, Y. T. (2018). Will an organic label always increase food consumption? It depends on food type and consumer differences in health locus of control. Food Quality and Preference, 63, 88-96.
[31]	Lee, W. C. J., Shimizu, M., Kniffin, K. M., & Wansink, B. (2013). You taste what you see: Do organic labels bias taste perceptions?. Food Quality and Preference, 29(1), 33-39.
[32]	Li, Y., Heuvinck, N., & Pandelaere, M. (2022). The light= healthy intuition. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 32(2), 326-335.
[33]	Loebnitz, N., Schuitema, G., & Grunert, K. G. (2015). Who buys oddly shaped food and why? Impacts of food shape abnormality and organic labeling on purchase intentions. Psychology & Marketing, 32(4), 408-421.
[34]	Machín, L., Aschemann-Witzel, J., Curutchet, M. R., Giménez, A., & Ares, G. (2018). Does front-of-pack nutrition information improve consumer ability to make healthful choices? Performance of warnings and the traffic light system in a simulated shopping experiment. Appetite, 121, 55-62. doi: S0195-6663(17)30747-X pmid: 29102533
[35]	Maehle, N., Iversen, N., Hem, L., & Otnes, C. (2015). Exploring consumer preferences for hedonic and utilitarian food attributes. British Food Journal, 117(12), 3039-3063.
[36]	Menninghaus, W., Wagner, V., Wassiliwizky, E., Schindler, I., Hanich, J., Jacobsen, T., & Koelsch, S. (2019). What are aesthetic emotions?. Psychological Review, 126(2), 171-195. doi: 10.1037/rev0000135 pmid: 30802122
[37]	Mookerjee, S., Cornil, Y., & Hoegg, J. (2021). From waste to taste: How “ugly” labels can increase purchase of unattractive produce. Journal of Marketing, 85(3), 62-77.
[38]	Nenkov, G. Y., & Scott, M. L. (2014). “So cute I could eat it up”: Priming effects of cute products on indulgent consumption. Journal of Consumer Research, 41(2), 326-341.
[39]	Paakki, M., Sandell, M., & Hopia, A. (2019). Visual attractiveness depends on colorfulness and color contrasts in mixed salads. Food Quality and Preference, 76, 81-90. doi: 10.1016/j.foodqual.2019.04.004
[40]	Page, C., & Herr, P. M. (2002). An investigation of the processes by which product design and brand strength interact to determine initial affect and quality judgments. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 12(2), 133-147.
[41]	Paul, A. (1994). The theory of architecture; concepts, themes and practice. New York: Van Nostrond Reinhold.
[42]	Plasek, B., Lakner, Z., & Temesi, Á. (2020). Factors that influence the perceived healthiness of food. Nutrients, 12(6), 1881.
[43]	Raghunathan, R., Naylor, R. W., & Hoyer, W. D. (2006). The unhealthy = tasty intuition and its effects on taste inferences, enjoyment, and choice of food products. Journal of Marketing, 70(4), 170-184.
[44]	Rebouças, M. C., Rodrigues, M. D. C. P., Freitas, S. M. D., Ferreira, B. B. A., & Costa, V. D. S. (2017). Effect of nutritional information and health claims related to cashew nut and soya milk beverages on consumers’ acceptance and perception. Nutrition & Food Science, 47(5), 721-730.
[45]	Reimann, M., Zaichkowsky, J., Neuhaus, C., Bender, T., & Weber, B. (2010). Aesthetic package design: A behavioral, neural, and psychological investigation. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 20(4), 431-441.
[46]	Schifferstein, H. N., Wehrle, T., & Carbon, C. C. (2019). Consumer expectations for vegetables with typical and atypical colors: The case of carrots. Food Quality and Preference, 72, 98-108. doi: 10.1016/j.foodqual.2018.10.002
[47]	Schnurr, B. (2019). Too cute to be healthy: How cute packaging designs affect judgments of product tastiness and healthiness. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 4(4), 363-375.
[48]	Sela, A., Berger, J., & Liu, W. (2009). Variety, vice, and virtue: How assortment size influences option choice. Journal of Consumer Research, 35(6), 941-951.
[49]	Septianto, F., Kemper, J. A., & Choi, J. J. (2020). The power of beauty? The interactive effects of awe and online reviews on purchase intentions. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 54, 102066.
[50]	Spence, C. (2012). Managing sensory expectations concerning products and brands: Capitalizing on the potential of sound and shape symbolism. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 22(1), 37-54.
[51]	Spielmann, N., Gomez, P., & Minton, E. (2024). The role of the ugly= bad stereotype in the rejection of misshapen produce. Journal of Business Ethics, 190(2), 413-437.
[52]	Suher, J., Szocs, C., & van Ittersum, K. (2021). When imperfect is preferred: The differential effect of aesthetic imperfections on choice of processed and unprocessed foods. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 49(5), 903-924.
[53]	Sundar, A., Cao, E. S., & Machleit, K. A. (2020). How product aesthetics cues efficacy beliefs of product performance. Psychology & Marketing, 37(9), 1246-1262.
[54]	Tijssen, I., Zandstra, E. H., de Graaf, C., & Jager, G. (2017). Why a ‘light’ product package should not be light blue: Effects of package colour on perceived healthiness and attractiveness of sugar-and fat-reduced products. Food Quality and Preference, 59, 46-58.
[55]	Van Ooijen, I., Fransen, M. L., Verlegh, P. W. J., & Smit, E. G. (2017). Signalling product healthiness through symbolic package cues: Effects of package shape and goal congruence on consumer behaviour. Appetite, 109, 73-82.
[56]	Wan, E. W., Chen, R. P., & Jin, L. (2017). Judging a book by its cover? The effect of anthropomorphism on product attribute processing and consumer preference. Journal of Consumer Research, 43(6), 1008-1030.
[57]	Wang, W., Keh, H. T., & Bolton, L. E. (2010). Lay theories of medicine and a healthy lifestyle. Journal of Consumer Research, 37(1), 80-97.
[58]	Wertenbroch, K. (1998). Consumption self-control by rationing purchase quantities of virtue and vice. Marketing Science, 17(4), 317-337.
[59]	Wu, F., Samper, A., Morales, A. C., & Fitzsimons, G. J. (2017). It’s too pretty to use! When and how enhanced product aesthetics discourage usage and lower consumption enjoyment. Journal of Consumer Research, 44(3), 651-672.
[60]	Yamim, A. P., Mai, R., & Werle, C. O. (2020). Make it hot? How food temperature (mis) guides product judgments. Journal of Consumer Research, 47(4), 523-543.
[61]	Ye, N., Morrin, M., & Kampfer, K. (2020). From glossy to greasy: The impact of learned associations on perceptions of food healthfulness. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 30(1), 96-124.
[62]	Zellner, D. A., Loss, C. R., Zearfoss, J., & Remolina, S. (2014). It tastes as good as it looks! The effect of food presentation on liking for the flavor of food. Appetite, 77, 31-35. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2014.02.009 pmid: 24589740
[63]	Zellner, D. A., Siemers, E., Teran, V., Conroy, R., Lankford, M., Agrafiotis, A., & Locher, P. (2011). Neatness counts. How plating affects liking for the taste of food. Appetite, 57(3), 642-648. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2011.08.004 pmid: 21855585
[64]	Zhou, Y. Y., Chen, R., & Zheng, Y. H. (2017). Salty food brings obesity? The effect of saltiness on calorie estimation. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 49(4), 513-525. doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2017.00513
	[周圆圆, 陈瑞, 郑毓煌. (2017). 重口味食物会使人变胖?——咸味对食物热量感知的影响. 心理学报, 49(4), 513-525.]