External Cues

Brother_Chris · March 4, 2012, 10:19pm

I found this article, seems pretty interesting. What are all ya’ll opinions?

Q: Why do people overeat?

A: We should be pretty well calibrated to know how much to eat to fill us up. We eat three times a day every day of our lives.

Yet when we asked people, “When was the last time you ate to the point of regretting it?” almost everyone could think of a time. Then we asked, “Why did you eat so much?”

What we found is that roughly 12 percent said, “I overate because of something emotional,” or “I had a terrible day,” or “I was feeling down,” or “I was bored.” About 51 percent said they overate because they were really hungry, and 37 percent said they overate because the food was spectacular.

So we asked ourselves what happens if the person is not hungry and the food is terrible. That led to our stale popcorn study.

Q: What did you test?

A: We gave people popcorn that was either fresh or five days old. The stale popcorn had been kept in a humidity-controlled entomology lab. On a scale of 1 to 10, people rated the taste a 3. It tasted like Styrofoam.

Q: And you gave moviegoers either medium or large bags?

A: Yes. And we gave them to people who had eaten dinner within 20 minutes of arriving at the theater. So we gave them bad food when they weren’t hungry, and people ate 34 percent more from the bigger bucket. If the popcorn was fresh, they ate 45 percent more from the larger bags.

When people left, we said, “Gee, you ate 34 percent more. Do you think the size of the bucket had anything to do with it?” And to a person they said, “No, how could it?”

Q: Are big servings the only influence on how much we eat?

A: No. Very simple things have a tremendous influence not just on how much but on how frequently we eat.

Link: How external cues make us overeat.

roybot · March 5, 2012, 2:52pm

People eating when not hungry during a movie is not a new thing. In fact, I talked about this in the Things You Hate That Everyone Loves thread.

I don’t know whether it’s the association between the movie and eating, or the anticipation of the experience, but it is an external cue, so I agree with the article.

If they’d have sealed the bags of popcorn, they’d have observed that most moviegoers open bags at a set point. Next time you’re at a movie, if you listen carefully, there’ll be a wave of bag opening when the rating screen appears. People rarely eat during trailers unless it’s from an open container.

Also, if you deliberately cough during a movie you’ll hear other people ‘cough back’ in a ‘call and response’ situation- they didn’t ‘need’ to cough, but did anyway.