Examining the effects of remote-video confederates on young women's food intake

Abstract

One's decisions about eating are at times, largely based on the observations of other people's eating behavior. Previous studies have shown that modeling of eating is a robust effect. The current research examined the impact of a video remote confederate on young women's food intake. Experiment 1 examined the effect of an eating or non-eating video confederate. Participants (N=77 female undergraduate students, M age=20.29) were exposed to a same-sex video confederate (i.e., a 25 year old woman) who was modeling eating (i.e., 4 winegums; pastille-type sweets) or not eating (i.e. no food visible). Results indicated that participants exposed to the eating confederate did not eat more than participants exposed to the non-eating confederate. Experiment 2 was conducted to address some of the limitations of Experiment 1. In this experiment, participants (N=51, M age=20.43) were exposed to one of three intake conditions: No-eating (i.e. food visible but not consumed), Small portion-size condition (i.e., 8 M&Ms) or Large portion-size condition (i.e., 20 M&Ms). The same video confederate as in Experiment 1 modeled these three conditions. Results indicated that participants did not adjust their intake to that of a video model. The current findings provide preliminary evidence for the assumption that modeling only exists if people have clear indications about how much others have consumed in the same context (as was the case in previous modeling studies). Future research is needed to further examine this proposition.