Children judge others based on their food choices

Abstract

Individuals and cultures share some commonalities in food preferences, yet cuisines also differ widely across social groups. Eating is a highly social phenomenon, however little is known about the judgments children make about other people's food choices. Do children view conventional food choices as normative and consequently negatively evaluate people who make unconventional food choices? In five experiments, 5-year-old children were shown people who ate conventional and unconventional foods, including typical food items paired in unconventional ways. In Experiment 1, children preferred conventional foods and conventional food-eaters. Experiment 2 suggested a link between expectations of conventionality and native/foreign status: Children in the U.S. thought English speakers were relatively more likely to choose conventional foods than French speakers. Yet, children in Experiments 3 and 4 judged people who ate unconventional foods as negatively as they judged people who ate canonical disgust elicitors and nonfoods, even when considering people from a foreign culture. Children in Experiment 5 were more likely to assign conventional foods to cultural ingroup members than to cultural outgroup members; nonetheless they thought that no one was likely to eat the nonconventional items. These results demonstrate that children make normative judgments about other people's food choices and negatively evaluate people across groups who deviate from conventional eating practices.

Social identity and contamination: Young children are more willing to eat native contaminated foods

“…Another possibility is that young children’s responses may be due to expectations about which foods are being offered by each speaker. Although the foods were always hidden from participants, young children are more likely to associate native (vs. foreign) speakers with familiar foods (e.g., DeJesus et al, 2019 ). This expectation, combined with the fact that young children tend to demonstrate neophobia (e.g., Cooke & Wardle, 2005 ), could have led young children to be generally wary of foreign foods and to assume that the native food was more likely to be familiar and preferred.…”

“…Indeed, different cultures possess social customs and rituals when it comes to how foods are prepared, which foods are sacred, and how meals are shared (e.g., Anderson, 2005 , Fischler, 1988 , Grunfeld, 1975 , Korsmeyer, 2005 , Millstone and Lang, 2002 , Rozin and Rozin, 1981 ). By 5 years of age, children develop knowledge that culture is tied to food choice; they expect Americans (cultural ingroup members) to be more likely to eat familiar conventional foods ( DeJesus, Gerdin, Sullivan, & Kinzler, 2019 ). One of the earliest developing and most robust indicators of culture is language (e.g., Cohen, 2012 , Kinzler et al, 2010 ).…”

“…We also included questions in which we asked children to rate each food’s “germiness.” These questions allowed us to ask whether children’s eating decisions were primarily driven by knowledge that contamination increases germs (a competence account) or were instead based mostly on preferences (e.g., children may prefer native foods if they expect them to be more familiar) (see DeJesus et al, 2019 ). Specifically, if children’s ability to avoid contaminated foods is primarily driven by a growing understanding that children should avoid germs, germiness ratings should align with willingness to try the foods.…”

Children’s implicit food cognition: Developing a food Implicit Association Test

“…Moreover, food cognition may interact with other potential influences on children's eating behavior, including peer modeling and social messages about what peers are eating (Birch, 1980;DeJesus et al, 2018) and cultural beliefs about what should or should not be eaten (Bian & Markman, 2020;DeJesus, Gerdin, et al, 2019;Ruby et al, 2015). Food has important social relevance, and from an early age children appreciate its social and cultural significance (DeJesus et al, 2018;DeJesus, Gerdin, et al, 2019;Liberman et al, 2016). For instance, the foods American adults tend to perceive as especially well-suited to be breakfast foods (i.e., foods that adults endorse as right to eat for breakfast compared to foods adults endorse as wrong to eat for breakfast) also tend to be less nutritious than foods they conceptualize as lunch or dinner foods (Bian & Markman, 2020).…”

Examining differences in minority versus majority preschoolers on social categorization and perceived intergroup distance

“…We used a modified version of the cultural distance scale (taken from the French adaption of Mahfud et al (2015)) in which we included three factors namely language, eating habits and music. We chose to include these three factors often used in previous studies examining racial categorization (DeJesus, Gerdin, Sullivan, & Kinzler, 2019; Weatherhead & White, 2018; Xiao et al, 2017).…”