People's intended serving behaviour at social vs. non-social meals

Emma V Long, Lenny R Vartanian, Kate Faasse, Suzanne Higgs

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Abstract

The social facilitation of eating refers to people's tendency to eat more food when dining with others than when dining alone. Recent research suggests that social facilitation may be driven by people's tendency to make more food available even before social meals begin, a phenomenon referred to as social "precilitation." In order to uncover the mechanisms underlying social precilitation, it is helpful to first understand whether people consciously and deliberately make more food available for social meals. Three studies (total N = 792) used an online serving paradigm to investigate this question. Participants were asked to imagine dining alone and dining socially, and indicated how much food they would serve themselves in each scenario. Unexpectedly, participants consistently reported intending to serve themselves smaller portions for social meals than for non-social meals (Study 1). This effect emerged even when they were asked about how someone else would behave (Study 2), and when they were informed that there was plenty of food available at the social meal (Study 3). This research highlights a disconnect between people's intended serving behaviour and the actual serving behaviour observed in laboratory studies, and suggests that people may not be aware of how their behaviour is influenced by the social context. Future research should examine why the disconnect between people's intended and actual serving behaviour occurs, whether it is related to the amount of food provided for social meals, and what implications the disconnect has for people's ability to manage their food intake.

Original languageEnglish
Article number106053
Number of pages12
JournalAppetite
Volume175
Early online date20 Apr 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Aug 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research has been supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier Ltd

Keywords

  • Amount of food
  • Food decision
  • Portion size decision
  • Social facilitation
  • Social precilitation

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Psychology(all)
  • Nutrition and Dietetics

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