Seeing Oneself in the Feed: Racialized Targeting in Food Marketing and Its Impact on Adolescents' Visual Interest and Unhealthy Food Preferences.

What psychological mechanisms make the marketing of unhealthy foods to racial and ethnic minority adolescents persuasive? We proposed that social media promoters who share adolescents' racial or ethnic identity are more interesting to look at than incongruent promoters especially to minority adolescents, and that social modeling of these visually interesting promoters increases susceptibility to choosing unhealthy foods. In two experiments (total n=1408), we tested the impact of visual interest in mock Instagram posts that featured promoters who did or did not share the same race/ethnicity as participants and who were depicted as endorsing unhealthy food or non-food products on adolescents' food choices. In Study 1, Black, but not non-Hispanic White, adolescents reported that racially congruent promoters were more visually interesting than incongruent promoters. In Study 2, minority adolescents who identified as Black, Hispanic, or East Asian reported that congruent promoters were more visually interesting than incongruent promoters. Non-Hispanic White adolescents did not report more interest in congruent, White promoters than incongruent promoters. In both studies, increased visual interest predicted an increase in unhealthy snack selections, but only when the posts endorsed unhealthy foods. We also found that visual interest predicted higher engagement with posts, reflected in stronger likelihood of "liking," commenting, or sharing the post. These findings reveal visual interest as a key attentional mechanism linking identity congruence to persuasion, advancing theories of motivated attention and informing strategies to counteract the influence of racially targeted food marketing.