Easy as Pie, or Tasty as One? Effects of Taste and Convenience Cues in Instagram Dessert Recipe Videos on Emotional and Cognitive Processing, Memory, and Intentions

Instagram's popular recipe videos showcase prominent cues, like taste and convenience, persuading viewers – particularly emerging adults (18-25) – to make the recipes. While hedonic taste cues trigger automatic appetitive responses, the processing of utilitarian convenience cues remains unclear. A within-subjects repeated-measures experiment with Instagram dessert recipe videos emphasizing taste, convenience, or both cues investigated psychophysiological processing and outcomes of these cues. We measured cognitive and emotional processing through commonly associated psychophysiological indicators (heart rate, facial electromyography, skin conductance) and self-reports, along with self-reported intentions to engage, save, purchase, and prepare, along with memory retrieval (recall). Self-report RM-ANCOVAs confirmed taste cues as a strong independent predictor of recipe video engagement intentions, but the co-presence of convenience cues significantly enhanced them by eliciting the highest intentions to engage with and act on the recipe videos, highlighting an interaction effect. Physiology RM-ANCOVAs indicated that videos lacking taste and/or convenience cues elicited greater cognitive and positive emotional processing (lower corrugator, higher zygomaticus/orbicularis), reflecting surprise, confusion, and amusement, backed by recall and self-report data. These responses indicate that taste and convenience cues in recipe videos are not just preferred, but essential for meeting viewer expectations, with their absence seemingly triggering schema violations that can reduce engagement. By linking psychophysiological and self-report measures to engagement, intentions, and memory, this study provides novel insights into consumer perception, expectations, and decision-making in prevalent recipe videos.