The effect of social cues on the eating behavior of obese and normal subjects1

Abstract

Schachter's externality hypothesis suggests that overweight individuals are more likely to be induced to eat by salient external cues than normal weight individuals. While a range of studies have demonstrated the plausibility of this hypothesis in the case of sensory stimuli (e.g., taste cues), there is little evidence that the hypothesis applies to social stimuli. The current study examines this latter proposition by exposing male and female, overweight and normal weight subjects to a same-sex or opposite-sex peer model. Under the guise of engaging in a taste experiment, the subjects were either exposed to a model who tasted no crackers (no eat), one cracker (low eat), or twenty crackers (high eat). In addition, control model-absent conditions were also run for purposes of establishing baseline eating rates. If the externality hypotheses were to prevail in social domains, one would expect overweight subjects to be more prone to model the cracker-eating behavior of the peer than normal weight individuals. However, the findings indicate that all subject groups regardless of weight evidence a rather clear modeling effect and all subjects evidence social inhibition effects on their eating behavior as well. Several intriguing interactions among subject sex, model sex, subject weight, and social condition were also found. The discussion explores the relevance of an externality model of overweight eating in social domains, and focuses upon the interesting and somewhat distinct pattern of socially mediated eating exhibited by overweight females.

Dysphagia—Ingestion or Deglutition?: A Proposed Paradigm

“…These and other muscle groups associated with bolus acceptance and preparation also must be properly choreographed with the rhythm and pace of upper limb movements while eating. Societal factors, anxiety, food palatability, and the degree of hunger or satiety modify eating and swallowing rate in normal subjects [14][15][16][17][18]. Psychosocial factors influence the presence and timing of aspiration of elderly nursing home patients [19].…”

Reprint of: Eating like you are overweight: the effect of overweight models on food intake in a remote confederate study

“…Weight status has been suggested as a potential characteristic that might have an effect on whether or not we are influenced by the eating behaviour of others, but previous studies have produced mixed findings (Conger, Conger, Costanzo, Wright, & Matter, 1980;Hermans, Larsen, Herman, & Engels, 2010;Johnston, 2002;McFerran, Dahl, Fitzsimons, & Morales, 2010). Most recently, Hermans et al (2010) found that healthy weight females modelled the intake of a live eating companion only when that companion appeared to be a similar weight and not when the eating companion appeared slimmer.…”

Does Service Employees’ Appearance Affect the Healthiness of Food Choice?

“…In such studies, the amount of food the model consumes is always predetermined by the experiment, and respondents display suppressed food intake when accompanied by somebody eating very little but elevated food intake when in the company of somebody eating a lot of the same food. Interaction effects have appeared for participants' and confederates' gender and weight, dieting habits, and hunger states (Conger, Conger, Costanzo, Wright, & Matter, 1980;Goldman, Herman, & Polivy, 1991;Rosenthal & McSweeney, 1979). Herman, Polivy, and Roth (2003) also refer to the process of mimicking food intake as a "matching norm" that reveals the appropriate amount of food in social consumption situations.…”