I came across an article today on Psychology Today that was pretty interesting. It’s basically a quick summary of a study done by Adriana Madzharov and Lauren Block in the October, 2010 issue of the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

Here’s a snippet of the article.

Many snack foods show a picture of what the product looks like. A box of chocolate chip cookies will show sample cookies on the front. A bag of pretzels will show pictures of the pretzels. A box of crackers will show the crackers.

The studies in this paper make three main points…

First, the number of items on the front of the package affects people’s judgments of how much food is inside the package…

Second, when given the chance to actually eat, people ate more food from packages with many items pictured on it than from packages with few items pictured on it.

Third, this effect was strongest…

Visit That Package Made Me Overeat to read more.