I’ll Have What She’s Having: Effects of Social Influence and Body Type on the Food Choices of Others

By Brent McFerran, Darren W. Dahl, Gavan J. Fitzsimons, Andrea C. Morales. 2010

426 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This research examines how the body type of consumers affects the food consumption of other consumers around them. We find that consumers anchor on the quantities others around them select but that these portions are adjusted according to the body type of the other consumer. We find that people choose a larger portion following another consumer who first selects a large quantity but that this portion is significantly smaller if the other is obese than if she is thin. We also find that the adjustment is more pronounced for consumers who are low in appearance self-esteem and that it is attenuated under cognitive load.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Marketing

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c12773eaa0f07d7c31323444daed50ea39c7dc80

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Citations in the corpus

How Images of Other Consumers Influence Subsequent Taste Perceptions (2013, background): “Second, existing research on social norms and food consumption has focused on the role that others play in influencing food choices and amount consumed (e.g., McFerran et al. 2010a, b).”
Positive Mood and Resistance to Temptation: The Interfering Influence of Elevated Arousal (2010, background): “…have long been interested in the conditions that diminish versus enhance consumers’ resistance to temptation (Andrade 2005; Andrade and Cohen 2007; Hoch and Loewenstein 1991; Kivetz and Keinan 2006, McFerran et al. 2010; Ramanathan and Menon 2006, Shiv and Fedorikhin 1999, Wilcox et al. 2009).”
Spotlights, Floodlights, and the Magic Number Zero: Simple Effects Tests in Moderated Regression (2012, positive): “The same point applies to our previous hypothetical extension of McFerran et al. (2010).”
Why did I eat that? Perspectives on food decision making and dietary restraint (2010, background): “In both of these cases, respondents ate less (McFerran et al., 2010).”
Can Brands Move in from the Outside? How Moral Identity Enhances Out-Group Brand Attitudes (2013, background): “Given that consumers respond favorably to aspirational group brands similar to in-group brands (Escalas and Bettman 2003) but negatively toward dissociative group brands (McFerran et al. 2010; White and Dahl 2007), we theorize that moral identity will only affect attitudes toward dissociative group ”
The Effects of Thin and Heavy Media Images on Overweight and Underweight Consumers: Social Comparison Processes and Behavioral Implications (2010, background): “For example, the eating behavior of an overweight or underweight individual in the room can inhibit or increase the amount of food participants consume, due to the cognitive process of anchoring and adjustment rather than shifting self-esteem levels (McFerran et al. 2010).”
How Language Shapes Word of Mouth's Impact (2017, background): “Consumers often observe the choices and preferences of others (Ariely and Levav 2000; McFerran et al. 2010), even if they are not interacting with the people they observe (Zhou and Soman 2003).”
Modeling of food intake: a meta-analytic review (2015, background): “…Larsen, Herman, and Engels (2008) included a “slim” confederate (body mass index [BMI; kg/m2] ¼ 20.9) and a “normal-weight” confederate (BMI unspecified); McFerran et al. (2010) included a “thin” confederate (BMI ¼ 19.2) and an obese confederate (apparent BMI ¼ 33); and Johnston (2002) included a…”
To Think or Not to Think:The Effect of Cognitive Deliberation on the Influence of Injunctive Versus Descriptive Social Norms (2011, background): “As an example of descriptive norms, the amount of food chosen by another consumer can set a norm for how much to take for later consumers (McFerran et al., 2010; Pliner & Mann, 2004).”