Factors influencing attitudes to food and eating behaviour

Question 1

Factor 1: Early learning and experience

Answer 1

• Early learning shapes eating behaviour and food preferences
• Exposure to food, social learning, operant conditioning and classical conditioning explain how this learning occurs

Question 2

Exposure to food

Answer 2

• Neophobia is the fear of new foods
• Many children show neophobic responses to food but by exposing a child to new foods it can change their preferences
• The mechanism of exposure suggests we like foods that are familiar with us.

Question 3

Social learning as an explanation of eating behaviour

Answer 3

• SLT is observing others eating new foods and this subsequently impacts ones own behaviour
• There is an influence of role models, e.g. parents, peers, siblings, media - this is because they can easily identify with the role model
• Observing someone enjoying the food- vicarious reinforcement
• The child or individual may get praise for eating healthily

Question 4

Operant conditioning as an explanation of eating behaviour

Answer 4

-A child would be praised from eating a particular food - positive reinforcement -> strengthens the behaviour

Question 5

Classical condition as an explanation for eating behaviour

Answer 5

-An UCS (Praise) -> UCR (Happy)

UCS + NS (Healthy food) -> UCR

CS (Healthy food) -> CR (Happy)

Question 6

Evaluation of early learning experiences: Birch supports classical conditioning

Answer 6

Birch found that rewarding eating with positive attention was effective in changing food preferences
-The adults are classically conditioned to be associated with the food and attention. The food has been classically conditioned response of adult attention, therefore the child will eat the food to have the adult attention

Question 7

Birch et al. (SLT)

Answer 7

Birch et al used peer modelling to change children’s preferences for veg. This supports SLT because after the children viewed their peers eating different veg and enjoying them, it influenced them and they still ate the diff veg weeks after the experiment.

Question 8

Methodological of birch et al.

Answer 8

• Did not account for social desirability (children could’ve lied to seem more healthy, or just said it because thats was they thought the researchers wanted to hear)
• Lacks generalisability

Question 9

Strength of SLT

Answer 9

• It practical applications
• Lowe et al realised how children can be influenced by others and more exposure can lead to a more varied diet and so they conducted a study using ‘food dudes’ and it showed that the exposure to this caused significant changes in the children’s diets

Question 10

Birch and Marlin (1982)

Answer 10

-The children were introduced to novel foods over a six-week period which showed a shift in their food preferences. This familiarises the child with the food which reduces neophobia, so the child learns to enjoy the food that they are exposed to

Question 11

What evolutionary benefit did neophobia have?

Answer 11

Survival; the fear of new foods prevented us from eating harmful or dangerous foods

Question 12

Nature in explaining the early effect of exposure:

Answer 12

• Neophobia prevents us eating dangerous foods that could lead to death
• Therefore exposing children to safe foods they know are safe will then increase their survival

Question 13

Evidence for the role of nature by Benton

Answer 13

-Benton found that sweet foods are effective in reducing distress in very young babies, suggesting that babies may be born with innate food preferences

Question 14

Factor 2: Mood, Including Stress

Answer 14

We may eat more to enhance our mood: If we feel low in mood, we may eat to cheer ourselves up

Question 15

Garg et al

Answer 15

IV- whether they ate more in sad or happy films
DV- how much popcorn they ate in each film
They found that pps ate 28% more whilst watching films they considered to be sad. This supports mood enhancement as a factor for eating behaviour because it shows they ate more in order to cheers themselves up

Question 16

Methodological issues garg et al

Answer 16

• Pps could’ve not liked popcorn
• They could’ve eaten before the experiment
• Because of the briefing they may have been trying to concentrate on the film
• Not a large sample; lacks generalisability
• Random sampling is good and individual differences have been accounted for through repeated measures

Question 17

Opiate hypothesis

Answer 17

-Neurotransmitters called endorphins (chemically similar to heroin) regulate activity in the brains reward pathways. These pathways make us feel good to encourage biologically important behaviours (such as eating + sex)

Question 18

Evaluation of the opiate hypothesis

Answer 18

Evidence for this explanation comes from research into naloxone. This drug blocks endorphins receptors; it reduces food intake, especially of sweet foods and suppresses thoughts about food.

• We don’t eat much if we take naloxone because it blocks reward pathways, so the chemical pathway is blocked and we wont feel good about consuming the food
• Eating cheers us up because a chemical response is released to make us feel good -encouraging survival

Question 19

GEM (General effect model)

Answer 19

• The opiate hypothesis and studies such as garg et al, assume that eating causes common physiological changes in turn these lead to an increase in eating
• We may eat more to cheer ourselves up, so we might eat more to make ourselves feel better when stressed

stress - > physiological change -> eating

Question 20

IDM (Individual differences model)

Answer 20

-This proposes that is will only happen with certain groups of people

Differences in learning, history, attitudes or biology;
High vulnerability to stress: Low vulnerability to stress:
->stress -> stress
Physical/ psychological change
-> promotes eating -> Does not promote eating

Question 21

Vulnerable groups to research are:

Answer 21

• Emotional eaters: those who eat more during negative emotional states. May have learned to associate hunger and anxiety
• External eaters: those who eat in response to external (sight) rather than internal cues
• Restrained eaters: people who have to work to control their eating e.g. by dieting.

Question 22

In what ways is the IDM a more sophisticated model then the GEM

Answer 22

-It is a more sophisticated model because it accounts for individual differences and doesn’t assume that everyone stress eats

Question 23

Conner et al supports the IDM because…

Answer 23

• They accounted for the different types of eating habits and the correlation between that stress eating
• However it showed not significant correlation for the other types of eating habit and could argue it lacks support

Question 24

Conner et al methodological…

Answer 24

• Social desirability bias - may have lied to seem healthy or did not stress eat
• Ecological validity - real life
• operationalises stress; daily hassles have more effect than major events
• Connor et al. is only one study

Question 25

Lepper et al.

Answer 25

• Told children a story of a mother offering tow made up foods to her children, independent groups
• two conditions; non-contingent and contingent
• NC= The foods were offered together but in different orders so receive one food regardless of the other, so reward is specified
• C= They were told they could have one IF they had the other, so one was reliant on eating the other, so they will associate one food with reward behaviour.
• They were then asked which foods they preferred.
• The results showed that in the NC condition there was no particular preference, but in the C condition they preferred the food that was used as a reward.

Question 26

Lepper et al (behaviourism vs cognitive approach)

Answer 26

-The finding show that behaviourism is incomplete in explaining food preferences. The children have only listened to a story, so no learning via conditioning can have taken place. Rather, they work out that because it is used as a reward, that food must be preferable i.e the findings are due to their thought process- an explanation rooted in the cognitive approach

Question 27

Lepper et al evaluation

Answer 27

• Well controlled study
• There were two contingent conditions: the preference for the ‘reward food’ occurred when it was hupe or hule. This rules out the possibility that children just liked one word more that the other.
• The NC condition was to show that without this reward system children have no particular preference for food. So it is strong evidence, emphasising the importance of the cognitive aspect of early learning.
• Practical application = teaches people not to associate certain foods as rewards to their child wont prefer the unhealthy foods

Question 28

How does Lepper et al get around innate food preference?

Answer 28

When parents positively reinforce pudding by saying that the pudding will be a reward food. While this may encourage children to eat vegetables, the unintended consequence may be that it encourages pudding preference.
This can be difficult to investigate as reward foods are likely to be ones that we have an innate preference for anyway.
So Lepper et al used imaginary foods so the children have no preference for the foods.

Question 29

Lepper et al.

Answer 29

-28 pre‐school children were told a story about a child that was given 2 new foods (hupe and hule).
There were 2 conditions:
‐Non-Contingent: The children were told that the mother in the story offered their child first one
food, then the other‐having one food was not dependent on having the other.
‐Contingent: The children were told that the mother in the story said their child could have one food
if they ate the other‐having one food was dependent on having the other.

Question 30

What did Lepper et al. results show?

Answer 30

All of the children were asked which food they would prefer to have. The results showed there were no preferences in the non-contingent condition, however, in the contingent condition, the children preferred the food was used as a reward for eating the other food. Evidence suggests that pairing 2 foods in this way can lead to the reward food being viewed more positively to the food that provides
access to it.

Question 31

Evaluation of lepper et al.

Answer 31

• Well controlled study
• Two contingent conditions; the preference of reward occurred whether it was hupe or hule. This rules out the possibility of children just liking one word more than the other.
• The non-contingent condition was to show that without this reward system, children have no particular preference for food.

Question 32

Practical application for Lepper et al.

Answer 32

-This can be applied in homes or by advertising to encourage to eat healthier by not rewarding children with pudding.

Question 33

Leshem (2009) cultural and nature and nurture

Answer 33

• Leshem studied the diets of Bedouin Arab women living in desert encampments, Bedouin women who had lived for at least one generation in an urban setting and Jewish women in an urban setting.
• The diet of urban Bedouins hardly differed from that of the desert Bedouins. Both groups differed significantly from the Jewish women.
• The bedouin groups had higher intakes of carbohydrates and salt.

Question 34

How does the nature/ nurture debate arise in the Leshem study?

Answer 34

-This supports the idea that nature has a key element in our food preference as the Bedouins had extremely similar diets despite the fact they grew up in different environments.

Question 35

Conner et al (1999)

Answer 35

• To investigate whether individual differences affects eating behaviour in stressed individuals.
• 33 females, 27 males kept a daily record of the number and severity of daily hassles and snacks consumed
• Asked to complete questionnaires assessing three dimensions of behaviour: restrained, emotional + external eaters.
• High scorers on external eating had a significant positive relationship between hassles and snacking
• No sig relationships were found for the other two behaviours

Question 36

Earling learning A01 support; Macintyre et al

Answer 36

Macintyre et al found the media did influence food preferences however this may then be limited by a persons own personal circumstances such as income, family, culture or even age.