The illusion of calorie fluency: How metacognitive uncertainty leads to less extreme healthiness perceptions of foods

Abstract

Calorie information is frequently displayed in retail settings where food items are purchased, including grocery stores, hypermarkets, restaurants, cafés, convenience stores, and specialty shops. Some types of retailers are legally required to display calorie counts on packaging, menus, or menu boards. Conventional wisdom suggests that as people become more exposed to calorie information, they will make more informed choices and will be better able to judge the healthiness of foods. This research proposes a more nuanced influence of calorie information on consumers’ food evaluations. Specifically, this research hypothesizes that consumers are often overly confident in their ability to use calories to evaluate foods, an illusory fluency that is likely the result of the ubiquity of calorie information. Consistent with this illusory fluency account, this research finds that when consumers attempt to use calorie information in an evaluation or estimation task, the result can create metacognitive uncertainty, resulting in more moderate (i.e., less extreme) evaluations of the healthiness of foods. After trying to utilize their calorie knowledge in judgments or evaluations, consumers subsequently evaluate unhealthy foods as healthier, and healthy foods as less healthy. Nine experiments support the prediction that metacognitive uncertainty in the usage of calorie information in judgments can lead to more moderate evaluations of the healthiness of foods, and less healthy food choices.