Rramani Qëndresa, Gerhardt Holger, Grote Xenia, Zhao Weihua, Schultz Johannes, Weber Bernd
Center for Economics and Neuroscience, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany.
Institute of Experimental Epileptology and Cognition Research, University of Bonn Medical Center, Bonn, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2020 Nov 6;11:575170. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.575170. eCollection 2020.
Increasing rates of obesity have fueled interest in the factors underlying food choice. While epidemiological studies report that disadvantaged social groups exhibit a higher incidence of obesity, causal evidence for an effect of social contexts on food choice remains scarce. To further our knowledge, we experimentally investigated the effect of disadvantageous social context on food choice in healthy, non-dieting participants. We used three established experimental methods to generate social contexts of different valence in controlled laboratory settings: (i) receiving varying amounts of money in a Dictator Game (DG; = 40), (ii) being included or excluded in a Cyberball Game (CBG; = 35), and (iii) performing well, average, or poorly in a response time ranking task (RTR; = 81). Following exposure to a particular social context, participants made pairwise choices between food items that involved a conflict between perceived taste and health attributes. In line with previous research, stronger dispositional self-control (assessed via a questionnaire) was associated with healthier food choices. As expected, being treated unfairly in the DG, being excluded in the CBG, and performing poorly in the RTR led to negative emotions. However, we did not find an effect of the induced social context on food choice in any of the experiments, even when taking into account individual differences in participants' responses to the social context. Our results suggest that-at least in controlled laboratory environments-the influence of disadvantageous social contexts on food choice is limited.
肥胖率的不断上升引发了人们对食物选择背后因素的兴趣。虽然流行病学研究报告称，社会弱势群体的肥胖发病率较高，但社会环境对食物选择产生影响的因果证据仍然很少。为了增进我们的了解，我们通过实验研究了不利社会环境对健康、非节食参与者食物选择的影响。我们使用了三种既定的实验方法，在可控的实验室环境中营造不同效价的社会环境：（i）在独裁者博弈（DG；n = 40）中获得不同数量的金钱，（ii）在网络投球游戏（CBG；n = 35）中被纳入或排除，以及（iii）在反应时间排名任务（RTR；n = 81）中表现出色、表现一般或表现不佳。在接触特定的社会环境后，参与者在涉及味觉和健康属性冲突的食物项目之间进行两两选择。与先前的研究一致，更强的特质性自我控制（通过问卷调查评估）与更健康的食物选择相关。正如预期的那样，在DG中受到不公平对待、在CBG中被排除以及在RTR中表现不佳会导致负面情绪。然而，我们在任何实验中都没有发现诱导的社会环境对食物选择有影响，即使考虑到参与者对社会环境反应的个体差异。我们的结果表明，至少在可控的实验室环境中，不利社会环境对食物选择的影响是有限的。
