Children Judge Others Based on Their Conformity with Conventional Food Choices

• In Event: 3-131 - Examining the Development of Conformity Across Diverse Social Contexts

Integrative Statement

Eating is a highly social phenomenon, however little is known about the judgments children make about other people’s food choices. Do children view conventional food choice as normative and consequently negatively evaluate individuals who do not conform with these conventions? In five experiments, 5-year-old U.S. children (N = 160) were presented with people who ate different foods. In Experiment 1, children either evaluated conventional and unconventional food choices or the people who made those choices (Figure 1). In four subsequent experiments, we examined children’s thinking about the relationship between food and culture and their judgments about wider range of behaviors, including judgments of native and foreign speakers who ate conventional foods, unconventional foods, nonfoods, and disgust elicitors. If children judge others based on their food choices, they may or may not restrict these judgments to people they view as being part of their own cultural group. One possibility is that children may not expect outgroup members to follow the same rules as ingroup members (Schmidt et al., 2012), suggesting that food-based judgments are restricted to cultural ingroup members. Alternatively, children may extend judgments about food selection broadly, negatively judging individuals across groups who make unconventional food choices.

In Experiment 1, children rated conventional foods and the people who eat them (M=.67, SE=.04) more positively than unconventional foods (M=.42, SE=.04), F(1,30)=29.02, p<.001.  Experiment 2 suggested a link between expectations of conventionality and native/foreign status: Children were more likely to match conventional foods with English speakers and unconventional foods with French speakers (M=.58, SE=.03) than would be expected by chance, t(31)=2.3, p=.029.  Yet, children in Experiments 3 (F(3,90)=68.8, p<.001) and 4 (F(3,90)=40.3, p<.001) systematically differed in their evaluations based on the presented food choices, and judged people who ate unconventional foods as negatively as they judged people who ate canonical disgust elicitors and nonfoods, even when presented with people from a foreign culture (unconventional vs. disgust and nonfood: ps>.095; Figure 2).  Children in Experiment 5 were more likely to assign conventional foods to native speakers than foreign speakers (p<.0001, binomial test); nonetheless they thought that no one was likely to eat the non-conventional items (67% of items).

The results of these experiments provide evidence that children hold strong opinions about what should and should not be eaten and generalize these beliefs to their judgments of other people.  Specifically, children evaluated people who did not conform and instead made unconventional food choices more negatively than people who made conventional choices (Experiments 1, 3, and 4); they also evaluated people who ate unconventional foods as negatively as they evaluated people who ate nonfoods or disgust elicitors (Experiments 3-4).  Though children predicted that ingroup members would be more likely than outgroup members to eat conventional foods (Experiment 2, 5), children negatively evaluated outgroup members who ate non-conventional foods and reported that no one would eat those foods when explicitly provided with the option to do so (Experiment 5). Together, these studies suggest that children view non-conformity to their cultural food norms negatively – and even somewhat akin to eating disgust elicitors.

Authors

• Jasmine DeJesus, UNC Greensboro
  Presenting Author

• Emily Gerdin, Yale University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kathleen R. Sullivan, Department of Health and Human Services
  Non-Presenting Author

• Katherine Kinzler, Cornell University
  Non-Presenting Author