Promoting the avoidance of high-calorie snacks using Facebook as a self-affirmation manipulation.

Currently one in four adults in the UK are obese, and high calorie snacking plays a key role in this problem. Self-affirmation has been used to promote healthy dietary behaviours, and Facebook is emerging as new tool for eliciting self-affirmation, yet Facebook has not been used to self-affirm people in this context. Additionally, message-framing has been found to have significant effects on health message acceptance, yet research comparing appearance-focused and health-focused messages is limited and inconclusive. The present study examined the influence of self-affirming people (using Facebook or a standard self-affirmation task) and promoting the avoidance of high-calorie snacking behaviour following a health-focused or appearance-focused message. Participants completed either a Facebook, Self-Affirmation, or Control task and read either an appearance-focused or health-focused message highlighting the consequences of high-calorie snacking. High-calorie snacking behaviour and intentions to reduce high-calorie snacking were recorded at baseline and after seven days. Results indicate that the combination of the Control task (compared to the Self-affirmation and Facebook tasks) and appearance-focused (rather than health-focused) message resulted in significantly lower self-reported high-calorie snacking behaviour after seven days. This indicates that appearance-focused messages may be more effective in promoting the avoidance of high calorie snacks than health-focused messages. Implications of this and suggestions for future research are discussed within.