Images have long played a powerful role in shaping public perceptions of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), often reinforcing emotional reactions more than scientific understanding. A new experimental study published in the Journal of Science Communication (JCOM) explores how different types of images can influence people’s attitudes toward GMOs — and suggests that pictures may reinforce existing views, further polarizing them.
Powerful tools
Images are powerful tools, especially when it comes to food: they can push consumers toward one choice and steer them away from another.
Already at the beginning of this millennium, the “war” against GMOs relied heavily on images to convey negative messages — and scientifically misleading information, if not outright falsehoods — about foods produced using this technology. You may be familiar with the term “frankenfood”, popularised in a number of communication campaigns that paired images of food with those of the famous “creature” invented by Mary Shelley. Greenpeace’s campaigns are among the most famous examples, but they are far from unique: many other actors have used — and continue to use — this type of communication strategy.
Rachel Bailey is a researcher at the School of Communication at Florida State University who studies how images in the media can automatically influence people’s choices and opinions, drawing on approaches from evolutionary psychology. “I study how the media can naturally encourage people to do different sorts of things in automatic ways based on our own biological imperatives. And images tend to be quite helpful in that,” Bailey explains.
Bailey and colleagues (Jay Hmielowski, Myiah Hutchens, Pooja Ichplani, Jessica Sparks and Sun Young Park) have just published an experimental study in JCOM investigating how images may influence public attitudes toward GMOs.
Through the platform YouGov, the team recruited nearly a thousand participants, forming a sample representative of the U.S. population. Participants in the experiment read a short neutral description of GMOs accompanied by one of three possible conditions: no image, an image of an apple, or an image of an apple being injected with a substance using a syringe — intended to evoke the idea of “unnaturalness”.
Before the experiment, participants were classified according to their initial attitude toward GMOs (positive, negative, or uncertain). After viewing the text and images, they were asked to answer a series of questions measuring their attitudes toward GMOs, their willingness to try them, and the positive and negative components of their evaluation — from which the researchers calculated their level of “ambivalence” toward GMOs.
Deepening the divide
Contrary to what one might expect, in Bailey’s experiment the “positive” image — the apple alone — had a small effect on avoidance intentions among those who already supported GMOs.
The stimuli defined by the researchers as coactive (the apple with the hypodermic syringe, combining both a positive element — the apple — and a negative one — the syringe suggesting artificiality) produced an interesting result: “Compared to the no-image condition, the coactive image made people who were already supportive toward GMOs even less negative,” Bailey explains.
What emerges is a kind of opinion-extremizing effect: the images tended to reinforce attitudes that were already present. “The positive cue can make positive people more positive, but in exploratory analyses, the coactive cue did make the skeptics and the uncertain folks even less positive towards GMOs,” Bailey comments.
Bailey’s study confirms that images can have important effects on people’s opinions — particularly when food is involved — but in ways that are not always easy to predict, highlighting the importance of careful research. “I think images are still one of the best ways that we can change people’s opinions or at least lead them to be more open to a change of opinion in a persuasive context,” she says. “In this case, people have very strong attitudes. Those who had really strong attitudes towards GMOs were pretty stuck in those ideas. And that makes sense. So just an image, one cue over a very short period of time, didn’t change much for them.”
Journal of Science Communication
You’re the apple of my ambivalence: Can the primary motivational aspects of GMO foods lessen GMO avoidance?
7-Apr-2026