Yu Zhao, Kang Yixin, Liu Peipei, Ou Haokai, Zhang Wei, He Xianyou
Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education; School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China.
Key Laboratory of Chinese Learning and International Promotion, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China.
Foods. 2024 Aug 16;13(16):2559. doi: 10.3390/foods13162559.
Recently, many restaurateurs in the food and beverage industry started using vague and abstract names to label their dishes. However, the influence of the concreteness of food names on consumers' evaluations of food remains unclear. Therefore, the present study investigated people's perceptions of food names with different levels of concreteness and their evaluations of food deliciousness and healthiness through two experiments. Experiment 1 investigated the likelihood of names with different levels of concreteness being perceived as foods or dishes through subjective guessing tasks. In line with the hypothesis of mental imagery consistency, the results revealed that individuals were more inclined to perceive high-concreteness names as actual food or dishes than low-concrete names. Experiment 2 further explored the impact of food names with different levels of concreteness on consumers' perceptions and evaluations of food in terms of the direct sensory (deliciousness) and indirect inference (healthiness) dimension. The results showed that in terms of deliciousness, consistent with the feelings-as-information theory, high-concreteness food names were rated significantly higher than low-concreteness ones. In terms of healthiness, consistent with the incongruence theory, low-concreteness food names were rated significantly higher than high-concreteness ones. These results indicated that high-concreteness names were more likely to be perceived as foods or dishes. Moreover, they also had advantages in the direct sensory dimension (deliciousness) but were perceived as less healthy in the indirect inference dimension (healthiness). The present findings provide new evidence for studies related to food naming and the evaluation of deliciousness and healthiness and offer suggestions and strategies for the food and beverage industry in naming foods and dishes.
最近，食品和饮料行业的许多餐馆老板开始使用模糊和抽象的名称来给他们的菜肴命名。然而，食品名称的具体程度对消费者对食品的评价的影响仍不明确。因此，本研究通过两个实验调查了人们对不同具体程度的食品名称的认知以及他们对食品美味和健康程度的评价。实验1通过主观猜测任务调查了不同具体程度的名称被视为食品或菜肴的可能性。与心理意象一致性假设一致，结果显示，与低具体程度的名称相比，个体更倾向于将高具体程度的名称视为实际的食品或菜肴。实验2进一步探讨了不同具体程度的食品名称在直接感官（美味）和间接推断（健康）维度上对消费者对食品的认知和评价的影响。结果表明，在美味方面，与情感即信息理论一致，高具体程度的食品名称的评分显著高于低具体程度的名称。在健康方面，与不一致理论一致，低具体程度的食品名称的评分显著高于高具体程度的名称。这些结果表明，高具体程度的名称更有可能被视为食品或菜肴。此外，它们在直接感官维度（美味）上也具有优势，但在间接推断维度（健康）上被认为不太健康。本研究结果为与食品命名以及美味和健康评价相关的研究提供了新的证据，并为食品和饮料行业在命名食品和菜肴方面提供了建议和策略。
