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In addition to being loaded with unholy amounts of sugar, the cold breakfast cereals most American children enjoy are actually conducting covert psychological operations on them, according to researchers at Cornell University.
The researchers found that cereals marketed to kids are placed half as high on supermarket shelves as adult cereals, and that the average angle of the gaze of cereal spokes-characters on cereal boxes marketed to kids is downward at a 9.6 degree angle whereas spokes-characters on adult cereal look almost straight ahead. Findings show, for example, that brand trust was 16% higher and the feeling of connection to the brand was 28% higher when that Trix rabbit makes eye contact.
In short, the researchers' advice if you don't want your kids going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs is not to call the police, just don't take your kids down the cereal aisle in the grocery store.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday April 10 2014, @06:27AM
Not that I trust the (reporting on) the research. The conclusions are so ambiguously-worded, it's not entirely certain that they've proved anything apart from a tautology. And/or they're reading something into the mean of a bimodal distribution, which is very bogus (the cereals will likely be on two different shelves, you'll look down at the bottom ones and look up at the higher ones). And they're conflating their bogosity together with other unconnected facts (such as those about eye contact) to try and make an issue out of it.
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