Psychology/Marketing in school lunch lines

I will be posting the majority of my new blogs from the American Journal of Psychology, however, for the blog this week I will address a current topic in the news dealing with Psychology.

This specific topic also deals with both my Major and Minor, marketing and psychology respectively.

The U.S. Department of agriculture is giving 2 million dollars to food behavior scientists to research methods of marketing and psychology to "trick" younger children into eating healthier foods in lunch lines.

Some of the current marketing ideas include putting chocolate milk behind, or out of eye level of regular milk. This strategy has been used by marketers of companies for years in order to promote certain products over others with placement on shelves. In fact, product manufactures actually pay more money to have their products located at eye level in certain stores.



On the more psychological level the researchers are coming up with visually appealing ways in which to get children's attention to healthier foods. For example, putting healthy fruits and vegetables in elaborate displays.


Although some of these ideas seem elementary, they do actually work both in marketing and psychology.