Investigating the potential impact of changing health messages on alcohol products.

The University of South Wales was commissioned to undertake research using eye tracker technology and interviews to investigate what alcohol shoppers actually look at on alcoholic products’ labelling, packaging and on-shelf presentation. An observational design using mobile eye tracker equipment was employed. Twenty-five participants completed a brief questionnaire related to their consumption of alcohol and then undertook an alcohol shopping-related task whilst wearing mobile eye tracker glasses (with in-built digital voice recorders for ‘thinking out loud’ data). Participants were asked to verbalise their thought processes as they made their choices. Participants were subsequently asked to complete a brief survey related to the information that they use when purchasing alcohol. Price and brand (including factors such as country of origin and the look of a product on the shelf) are the key factors that shoppers use in deciding on which alcoholic beverages to purchase. Despite the majority of participants being in favour of health messages on bottles and cans, they don’t actually attend to them in any great detail. Shoppers often don’t look at the areas of a product where health information is most usually presented. Even when they do, it is usually only very briefly. It is possible that shoppers do not look at current on-product health information as they are already very familiar with the information these messages contain, however, further research would be necessary to evaluate whether ‘novel’ on product messages would receive attention. There may be some merit in designing more prominent on-shelf health-related signage, however, further research is also required in this respect

There is an 'Eye' in Team: Exploring the Interplay Between Emotion, Gaze Behavior and Collective Efficacy in Team Sport Settings

Little is understood about the attentional mechanisms that lead to perceptions of collective efficacy. This paper presents two studies that address this lack of understanding. Study 1 examined participants (N = 59) attentional processes relating to positive, neutral or negative emotional facial photographs, when instructed to select their ‘most confident’ or ‘least confident’ team. Eye gaze metrics of first fixation duration (FFD), fixation duration (FD) and fixation count (FC) were measured alongside individual perceptions of collective efficacy and emotional valence of the teams selected. Participants had shorter FFD, longer FD, and more FC on positive faces when instructed to select their most confident team (p < .05). Collective efficacy and emotional valence were significantly greater when participants selected their most confident team (p < .05). Study 2 explored the influence of video content familiarity of team-based observation interventions on attentional processes and collective efficacy in interdependent team-sport athletes (N = 34). When participants were exposed to familiar (own team/sport) and unfamiliar (unknown team/sport) team-based performance video, eye tracking data revealed similar gaze behaviours for the two conditions in terms of areas of interest. However, collective efficacy increased most for the familiar condition. Study 1 results indicate that the emotional expressions of team members influence both where and for how long we look at potential team members, and that conspecifics’ emotional expression impacts on our perceptions of collective efficacy. For Study 2, given the apparent greater increase in collective efficacy for the familiar condition, the similar attentional processes evident for familiar and unfamiliar team footage suggests that differences in meaning of the observed content dictates collective efficacy perceptions. Across both studies, the findings indicate the importance of positive emotional vicarious experiences when using team-based observation interventions to improve collective efficacy in teams