The Effect of Smile Cues on Food Calorie Perception: The Moderating Role of Dietary Restraint

ABSTRACT Consumers are becoming increasingly attentive to healthy eating and the caloric content of their food. However, when judging a food's calories, they often lack sufficient knowledge or objective information and therefore rely on marketplace cues to make subjective evaluations. Although smile cues are widely used in food marketing, little is known about how consumers' dietary restraint shapes the calorie‐related inferences they draw from such cues. Across five studies, we show that, for foods that are inherently indulgent or can meaningfully be construed in indulgence‐related terms, smile cues increase perceived indulgence, which in turn leads to higher calorie perceptions more strongly when dietary restraint is higher or situationally activated. Extending the focal calorie perception process to downstream behaviors, we further show that consumers were less likely to choose foods with a smile cue when dietary restraint is activated than not. These findings contribute to the literature on food calorie judgment, smile, and dietary restraint.