A social norms approach to encourage healthier eating

肥胖是当前主要的健康问题，鼓励更健康的饮食是国家和全球的优先事项。然而，在一个高热量食物太容易获得和高度可见的环境中，做出健康的食物选择并不容易。心理学研究表明，我们的行为受到我们对其他人在类似情况下如何行为的看法以及其他人对特定情况下适当行为的看法的强烈影响。在饮食行为方面，人们把别人当作吃多少的指南，而在吃饭的情况下，其他人的存在可以指导食物的选择。这表明，鼓励健康饮食的一种方法是提供有关他人健康饮食习惯的信息。这种方法已成功地用于减少不健康的酒精饮料消费，但尚未应用于饮食行为。为了解决这个问题，并提供证据来帮助开发新的干预措施来促进更健康的饮食，我们将进行实验，首先让人们接触提供有关他人健康饮食行为信息的海报和传单，然后我们将评估实际的食物选择在模拟的咖啡馆环境中。我们预测，我们可以在这些实验中促进更健康的食物选择，然后我们将在餐饮店实施最有效的策略。将评估伯明翰大学员工实际食品购买的影响。这些研究符合ESRC关于健康和福祉的战略优先事项，将促进我们对社会规范在改变健康行为中的作用的理解，并为新型健康饮食干预措施提供基础。

Obesity is major current health concern and encouraging healthier eating is a national and global priority. However, making healthful food choices is not easy in an environment in which high calorie foods are all too easily available and highly visible. Psychological research has demonstrated that how we behave is strongly influenced by our perceptions of how other people behave in similar situations and by the opinions of others about what is appropriate behaviour in a given context. In relation to eating behaviour, people look to others as a guide for how much to eat and the presence of other people in eating situations can guide food selection. This suggests that one way of encouraging healthier eating would be to provide information about the healthy eating habits of others. This approach has been used successfully to reduce unhealthy consumption of alcoholic drinks but has yet to be applied to eating behaviour. To address this, and to provide evidence to help develop a new intervention to promote healthier eating, we will conduct experiments in which we will first expose people to posters and flyers that provide information about the healthy eating behaviour of others and then we will assess actual food selection in a simulated café environment. We predict that we can promote healthier food selection in these experiments, and then we will implement the most effective strategy in a catering outlet. The effect on actual food purchases of employees at the University of Birmingham will be assessed. These studies fit under ESRC strategic priority on health and wellbeing and will advance our understanding of the role of social norms in changing health behaviours and provide a basis for novel healthy eating interventions.