Chapter 50 - Social Influences on Eating in Children and Adults

Abstract

This chapter, consisting primarily of descriptions of laboratory studies of children and adults, reviews the literature on the effects of social influence on two aspects of eating—the control of intake (with an emphasis on how much people eat) and food selection (with an emphasis on the foods that people prefer and choose to eat). Social influence has important effects on the control of intake in adults, as revealed by research in three separate areas: social facilitation, impression management, and modeling. These demonstrate that the effect of social influence on human eating behavior is complex, and the extent to which people influence others to eat more or less depends on a variety of situational factors. Briefly, the research on social facilitation shows that individuals eat more in the presence of others than when they are alone and that intake increases as the number of co-eaters increases. The effect of the presence of others on eating, assessed by food diaries generated by members of a community sample, occurs across a range of meal occasions and contexts. In contrast to social facilitation, the research on impression management shows that the presence of others usually results in decreased amounts eaten, as individuals attempt to project positive images of themselves. Other research shows that overweight individuals, presumably at risk from negative attributions related to eating, suppress their eating in the presence of others, especially others who are not obese.