Assessing the immediate emotional impacts of calorie labelling using facial coding

Can individuals be influenced to make healthier choices simply by the way information, such as calorie labelling, is presented to them? Such behaviourally informed approaches – or “nudges” - have been gaining traction in public policy for the past decade, but little has been understood about the consumer welfare affects that these interventions elicit and the overall impact on consumer choices. A new exploratory study, conducted by Dr Kate Laffan, Professor Cass R. Sunstein and Professor Paul Dolan in the LSE Behavioural Lab for Teaching and Research, used automatic facial expression coding, via webcams, to investigate the impact that nudges have on people’s choices, and to analyse the emotional impacts caused by the intervention. You can read the full paper here.