The effects of fear and hunger on food neophobia in humans.

We examined the effects of hunger and fear on food neophobia in humans. Subjects came to the experiment five or more hours food-deprived (high hunger) or two or less hours food-deprived (low hunger) and were assigned either to give a speech (high fear) or to listen to a speech (low fear). All subjects were then given the task of selecting for tasting one member of each of ten pairs of foods, each pair consisting of one novel and one familiar food. The number of novel foods chosen was the measure of food neophobia (with fewer choices indicative of greater neophobia). The results indicated that subjects were least neophobic in the low fear-low hunger condition and were tentatively interpreted in terms of Hull's (1943) theory of behavior. That is, it was assumed that fear and hunger summated to produce different levels of drive in the various conditions, which combined with responses of different habit strength (the tendency to approach novel stimuli and the tendency to approach familiar stimuli) to produce the results obtained.