Seeking confirmation? Biased information search and deliberation in the food domain

Individuals are often confronted with choosing between competing food attributes (e.g., healthiness vs. tastiness). To promote healthier food choices, is it important to understand what drives these choices. One potential driver of food choices is a confirmation bias, namely, a systematic bias in our approach to seeking information related to food attributes. This bias may generate avoidance of belief-disconfirming information and/or discounting of the value of belief-disconfirming arguments, both of which are documented in other domains (e.g., politics, religion). This study aimed to examine the confirmation bias in the food domain. We conducted an online study with a large sample (N = 427) stratified by sex and body mass index. Our sample, hypotheses, and analysis plan were pre-registered on the Open Science Framework. We measured pro-health and pro-taste food-related information aimed at directly testing the presence of the confirmation bias in the food domain. We also examined whether higher deliberation (indexed by higher amount of thought, lower sleepiness, and higher cognitive reflection) modulated this bias. Results showed that individuals avoided exposure to information that promoted the food attribute that they utilized less (i.e., healthiness or tastiness). Furthermore, arguments promoting less used food attributes were perceived as weaker, and this effect was enhanced for more alert individuals (i.e., less sleepy). To our knowledge, these findings provide the first evidence for a confirmation bias in the food domain and suggest that unlike other cognitive biases, higher deliberation may enhance this bias. Marketing could focus efforts on convincing consumers that healthy food is tasty, rather than convincing them to care more about health.