Abstract
Negative attitudes toward healthy foods and positive attitudes toward unhealthy foods significantly undermine healthier choices, and evaluative conditioning (EC) has the potential to reverse such attitudes. EC is a learning procedure in which a neutral stimulus acquires emotional value through repeated pairings with an affectively charged stimulus. This research combined multi-channel physiological measurement instrument and virtual reality in two studies, incorporating actual food tasting into the intervention procedure, to explore whether multisensory EC is a more effective attitude change strategy than unisensory EC to nudge healthy eating. Study 1 (N = 48) compared the effectiveness of single-sensory EC (visual or auditory) versus multisensory EC (using both visual and auditory stimuli) and found that multisensory EC produced a stronger health-nudging effect. Physiological data, including heart rate and skin conductance responses, further supported this finding. To further enhance the efficacy of multisensory EC paradigms, Study 2 (N = 96) also explored the influence of media (2D vs. VR) and food type (healthy vs. unhealthy) on intervention outcomes. Results revealed an asymmetric effect: VR amplified the effects of multisensory EC on attitude-related and consumption-related outcomes for healthy foods, but not for unhealthy foods. Taken together, this research demonstrates the advantages of multisensory EC in nudging healthy eating and provides a low-cost, easy-to-operate strategy with the potential to shift people’s negative attitudes toward healthy foods.