New Moderators of the Halo Effect: Consumer Inferences on Negative Packaging Labels

摘要

In recent years, calls for labeling addressing food ingredients and processing(e.g., GMO labels)have increased;companies like Campbell's Soup have complied.Given their growing prevalence, it is important to understand the substantive impact of such labels on consumer inferences.Specifically, this research proposes that these labels will create a negative halo effect, biasing consumers’global inferences about the product as well as subsequent judgments and behavior.This extends previous research identifying the power of labels to generate positive halo effects(e.g., Schuldt and Schwarz 2010). Though the halo effect is a particularly robust phenomena, the current research suggests that encouraging consumers to engage in deeper, more analytic processing may allow consumers to overcome the halo effect.This proposition builds on dual-process models, many of which suggest that consumers generally default to relatively intuitive processing unless greater processing is required.This research therefore investigates three moderators designed to encourage more analytic processing: critical thinking, causal reasoning, and paradoxical persuasion.Specifically, both critical thinking and causal reasoning mindsets may prompt a reluctance to accept information at face value.Paradoxically, statements that are too extreme to be consistent with consumers’prior held beliefs also encourage resistance to persuasion(Swann 1987).