Abstract
During the early stages of the COVID‐19 pandemic takeaway food orders generally increased, yet sales of Chinese and Italian food declined. At this time, news sources ran stories on the safety of cuisine from these countries, frequently juxtaposed with communications on mortality‐related information related to the virus. Terror management theory suggests mortality concerns can lead people to defend against the psychological threat of death by bolstering positive evaluations of products and values of their own culture, and by disparaging products and values of other cultures. This translates to food preferences, with death reminders heightening consumption of food from one's own (vs. others’) culture. However, whether this extends to food safety perceptions has not yet been probed. In the present experimental study, we examine whether death reminders (vs. a control topic) led U.S. participants to view American takeaway food as safer to consume, relative to Chinese and Italian food. Results indicate that across conditions, American food was evaluated as safer relative to Chinese and Italian takeout. Further, American takeaway was seen as safer after mortality reminders (vs. a control topic), with no differences in safety evaluations for Chinese or Italian takeout. Results are discussed in relation to the COVID‐19 pandemic.
Highlights
During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, interest in visiting restaurants broadly decreased around the globe, with data indicating many consumers switching to online delivery for grocery and takeout orders (e.g., Shakespeare, 2020)
While across conditions, the Italian and Chinese takeaway foods were rated as less safe relative to the American option, there was no evidence of worldview defense being expressed as lower food safety perceptions for the Italian or Chinese foods following the mortality salience manipulation
While data from various news sources suggested a general trend of increased takeaway food consumption during the pandemic, this was not demonstrated for certain cuisines, namely Chinese and Italian takeout
Summary
During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, interest in visiting restaurants broadly decreased around the globe, with data indicating many consumers switching to online delivery for grocery and takeout orders (e.g., Shakespeare, 2020). As noted, according to TMT, when death thoughts are active but outside of focal awareness, there are broadly two ways in which people defend their cultural worldview—either by increasing support for their own worldview and its associated symbols, beliefs, and products, or, by decreasing support for alternative worldviews and their associated symbol, beliefs, and products Following this analysis, our central hypothesis posits that U.S participants would rate American takeaway food as safer to consume following a reminder of death (vs social exclusion) relative to foreign takeaway food. Despite the potential for outgroup derogation to not manifest (or manifest less prominently), we opted to predict it would be expressed as lower evaluations of Chinese and Italian food safety following mortality salience (vs control) We reasoned this was consistent with the broader pattern of findings in TMT research, and that there were significantly more studies demonstrating the outgroup derogation effect (vs not). Because it has been used as a negative but non-death-related threat in prior research ( keeping the valence of the manipulation the same, while differing on the mortality content), and second, because many people were socially isolating at this time and as such the topic represented a suitable reflection of a real-world threat people may have currently been experiencing (or threatened with) during the pandemic (we return to this in the general discussion)
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