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Delicate dining with a date and burger binging with buddies: impression management across social settings and consumers’ preferences for masculine or feminine foods

Consumers often use their food choices as an impression management strategy to signal desirable aspects about themselves to others, especially in public places like restaurants and cafeterias, where the presence of others can promote certain consumption choices and preference patterns. In mating con...

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Autores principales: Gasiorowska, Agata, Folwarczny, Michał, Tan, Lynn K. L., Otterbring, Tobias
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10311548/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37396139
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2023.1127409
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author Gasiorowska, Agata
Folwarczny, Michał
Tan, Lynn K. L.
Otterbring, Tobias
author_facet Gasiorowska, Agata
Folwarczny, Michał
Tan, Lynn K. L.
Otterbring, Tobias
author_sort Gasiorowska, Agata
collection PubMed
description Consumers often use their food choices as an impression management strategy to signal desirable aspects about themselves to others, especially in public places like restaurants and cafeterias, where the presence of others can promote certain consumption choices and preference patterns. In mating contexts, people prefer gender-typical traits and characteristics in a potential partner. Food options can also be classified according to their gender typicality, with certain alternatives perceived as feminine (e.g., salad, seafood) and with other options perceived as more masculine (e.g., steak, burger). Drawing on impression management theories from the drinking and dining domain and literature on sex differences in human mate preferences, we present a high-powered experiment investigating whether consumers’ preferences for masculine or feminine foods depend on the social setting in which the food consumption takes place: dining with an attractive date (mating) or meeting and eating with friends (non-mating). Participants (N = 162, 46.9% females, 53.1% males; age M = 41.8  years, SD = 14.5) were randomly assigned to one of the two experimental conditions (mating vs. non-mating) and were asked to indicate their food preferences for 15 dishes that differed markedly in perceived femininity/masculinity. Consistent with our theorizing, females (males) generally had a stronger preference for foods perceived as more feminine (masculine), thereby supporting the gender-typicality thesis at the aggregate level. Furthermore, females in the mating condition—but not females in the non-mating condition—reported significantly stronger preferences for more feminine food alternatives. However, in direct contrast to our theorizing, males preferred more masculine meals in the non-mating condition (i.e., when dining with friends), whereas this gender-typical tendency did not emerge in the mating condition (i.e., when dining with an attractive date). We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings and present a set of fruitful avenues for future research.
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spelling pubmed-103115482023-07-01 Delicate dining with a date and burger binging with buddies: impression management across social settings and consumers’ preferences for masculine or feminine foods Gasiorowska, Agata Folwarczny, Michał Tan, Lynn K. L. Otterbring, Tobias Front Nutr Nutrition Consumers often use their food choices as an impression management strategy to signal desirable aspects about themselves to others, especially in public places like restaurants and cafeterias, where the presence of others can promote certain consumption choices and preference patterns. In mating contexts, people prefer gender-typical traits and characteristics in a potential partner. Food options can also be classified according to their gender typicality, with certain alternatives perceived as feminine (e.g., salad, seafood) and with other options perceived as more masculine (e.g., steak, burger). Drawing on impression management theories from the drinking and dining domain and literature on sex differences in human mate preferences, we present a high-powered experiment investigating whether consumers’ preferences for masculine or feminine foods depend on the social setting in which the food consumption takes place: dining with an attractive date (mating) or meeting and eating with friends (non-mating). Participants (N = 162, 46.9% females, 53.1% males; age M = 41.8  years, SD = 14.5) were randomly assigned to one of the two experimental conditions (mating vs. non-mating) and were asked to indicate their food preferences for 15 dishes that differed markedly in perceived femininity/masculinity. Consistent with our theorizing, females (males) generally had a stronger preference for foods perceived as more feminine (masculine), thereby supporting the gender-typicality thesis at the aggregate level. Furthermore, females in the mating condition—but not females in the non-mating condition—reported significantly stronger preferences for more feminine food alternatives. However, in direct contrast to our theorizing, males preferred more masculine meals in the non-mating condition (i.e., when dining with friends), whereas this gender-typical tendency did not emerge in the mating condition (i.e., when dining with an attractive date). We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings and present a set of fruitful avenues for future research. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-06-16 /pmc/articles/PMC10311548/ /pubmed/37396139 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2023.1127409 Text en Copyright © 2023 Gasiorowska, Folwarczny, Tan and Otterbring. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Nutrition
Gasiorowska, Agata
Folwarczny, Michał
Tan, Lynn K. L.
Otterbring, Tobias
Delicate dining with a date and burger binging with buddies: impression management across social settings and consumers’ preferences for masculine or feminine foods
title Delicate dining with a date and burger binging with buddies: impression management across social settings and consumers’ preferences for masculine or feminine foods
title_full Delicate dining with a date and burger binging with buddies: impression management across social settings and consumers’ preferences for masculine or feminine foods
title_fullStr Delicate dining with a date and burger binging with buddies: impression management across social settings and consumers’ preferences for masculine or feminine foods
title_full_unstemmed Delicate dining with a date and burger binging with buddies: impression management across social settings and consumers’ preferences for masculine or feminine foods
title_short Delicate dining with a date and burger binging with buddies: impression management across social settings and consumers’ preferences for masculine or feminine foods
title_sort delicate dining with a date and burger binging with buddies: impression management across social settings and consumers’ preferences for masculine or feminine foods
topic Nutrition
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10311548/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37396139
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2023.1127409
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