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Social Models Provide a Norm of Appropriate Food Intake for Young Women
It is often assumed that social models influence people’s eating behavior by providing a norm of appropriate food intake, but this hypothesis has not been directly tested. In three experiments, female participants were exposed to a low-intake model, a high-intake model, or no model (control conditio...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2013
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3827378/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24236117 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0079268 |
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author | Vartanian, Lenny R. Sokol, Nicole Herman, C. Peter Polivy, Janet |
author_facet | Vartanian, Lenny R. Sokol, Nicole Herman, C. Peter Polivy, Janet |
author_sort | Vartanian, Lenny R. |
collection | PubMed |
description | It is often assumed that social models influence people’s eating behavior by providing a norm of appropriate food intake, but this hypothesis has not been directly tested. In three experiments, female participants were exposed to a low-intake model, a high-intake model, or no model (control condition). Experiments 1 and 2 used a remote-confederate manipulation and were conducted in the context of a cookie taste test. Experiment 3 used a live confederate and was conducted in the context of a task during which participants were given incidental access to food. Participants also rated the extent to which their food intake was influenced by a variety of factors (e.g., hunger, taste, how much others ate). In all three experiments, participants in the low-intake conditions ate less than did participants in the high-intake conditions, and also reported a lower perceived norm of appropriate intake. Furthermore, perceived norms of appropriate intake mediated the effects of the social model on participants’ food intake. Despite the observed effects of the social models, participants were much more likely to indicate that their food intake was influenced by taste and hunger than by the behavior of the social models. Thus, social models appear to influence food intake by providing a norm of appropriate eating behavior, but people may be unaware of the influence of a social model on their behavior. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3827378 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2013 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-38273782013-11-14 Social Models Provide a Norm of Appropriate Food Intake for Young Women Vartanian, Lenny R. Sokol, Nicole Herman, C. Peter Polivy, Janet PLoS One Research Article It is often assumed that social models influence people’s eating behavior by providing a norm of appropriate food intake, but this hypothesis has not been directly tested. In three experiments, female participants were exposed to a low-intake model, a high-intake model, or no model (control condition). Experiments 1 and 2 used a remote-confederate manipulation and were conducted in the context of a cookie taste test. Experiment 3 used a live confederate and was conducted in the context of a task during which participants were given incidental access to food. Participants also rated the extent to which their food intake was influenced by a variety of factors (e.g., hunger, taste, how much others ate). In all three experiments, participants in the low-intake conditions ate less than did participants in the high-intake conditions, and also reported a lower perceived norm of appropriate intake. Furthermore, perceived norms of appropriate intake mediated the effects of the social model on participants’ food intake. Despite the observed effects of the social models, participants were much more likely to indicate that their food intake was influenced by taste and hunger than by the behavior of the social models. Thus, social models appear to influence food intake by providing a norm of appropriate eating behavior, but people may be unaware of the influence of a social model on their behavior. Public Library of Science 2013-11-13 /pmc/articles/PMC3827378/ /pubmed/24236117 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0079268 Text en © 2013 Vartanian et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Vartanian, Lenny R. Sokol, Nicole Herman, C. Peter Polivy, Janet Social Models Provide a Norm of Appropriate Food Intake for Young Women |
title | Social Models Provide a Norm of Appropriate Food Intake for Young Women |
title_full | Social Models Provide a Norm of Appropriate Food Intake for Young Women |
title_fullStr | Social Models Provide a Norm of Appropriate Food Intake for Young Women |
title_full_unstemmed | Social Models Provide a Norm of Appropriate Food Intake for Young Women |
title_short | Social Models Provide a Norm of Appropriate Food Intake for Young Women |
title_sort | social models provide a norm of appropriate food intake for young women |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3827378/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24236117 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0079268 |
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