Slashdot Mirror
Diners Tend To Eat More If Their Companions Are Overweight
BarbaraHudson writes: A University of Illinois study (abstract) that shows that people tend to eat more in the presence of an overweight person. From the article: "The test involved a sample of 82 college coeds who were observed helping themselves to a simple pasta and salad meal. Each of the coeds were themselves of normal weight. The students first required to watch what they believed was a fat woman serving herself some of the food. The fat woman was actually an actress wearing a fat suit.
After observing the "corpulent" woman serve herself, the students were allowed to come forward and serve themselves pasta and salad. On average, the coeds each served themselves more pasta than the "fat" woman had selected while taking less salad than she did. When the same study was performed with the actress appearing sans the fat suit, researchers observed that students ended up eating more salad than pasta. The conclusion was simple: people may consume more unhealthy food and eat less healthy food when in the presence of an overweight person." As anyone on a diet will tell you, a waist is a terrible thing to mind. Weight control is a lot more complex than the article makes it seem, though some will welcome the opportunity to blame someone else.
After observing the "corpulent" woman serve herself, the students were allowed to come forward and serve themselves pasta and salad. On average, the coeds each served themselves more pasta than the "fat" woman had selected while taking less salad than she did. When the same study was performed with the actress appearing sans the fat suit, researchers observed that students ended up eating more salad than pasta. The conclusion was simple: people may consume more unhealthy food and eat less healthy food when in the presence of an overweight person." As anyone on a diet will tell you, a waist is a terrible thing to mind. Weight control is a lot more complex than the article makes it seem, though some will welcome the opportunity to blame someone else.
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So obesity in America is a snowball effect and cannot be stopped.
So can we expect all the junk food emporiums to now start recruiting fatties to serve their customers?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
An advertising campaign: fat women eating salad.
"The fat woman was actually an actress wearing a fat suit." It must have been too difficult to find an obese person in Illinois.
Not really, it's just if they paid a fat lady to stuff food into herself, they could have been sued for damages.
The fat woman was actually an actress wearing a fat suit.
Why ? I can't imagine it would be too hard to find a genuinely fat person to take the job.
If the reverse is true, which seems fairly likely, there'll be an equilibrium at some point. If that point is overweight for both persons, it'd be interesting to which trend continued (assuming fat people eat less around slimmer people). I guess they'll publish more papers exploring the other combinations of people in the future.
Mirror Neurons.
Everyone seems to be focusing on imitation but what if the reason is different? What if the reason is lack of pressure? Namely "They're heavy, they won't judge me." is taken as an excuse to let self control loose. Seeing it controlled vs eating alone would be interesting and could help narrow it down. If alone and feeling unwatched would people eat more alone than even with someone heavier would imply the pressure theory, while eating more with someone heavier than while alone and unwatched would imply imitation. .
Not really, it's just if they paid a fat lady to stuff food into herself, they could have been sued for damages.
An obese lady would attempt to sue due to one meal?
This would be that one time where I would actually welcome the term "pre-existing condition", since it would be quite obvious and fitting here.
As opposed to where the OP wants the blame placed.
So, do we put them in special sections with visual barriers, or just make them eat outside where we can't see them? Will we see fat people huddled around doorways in winter, banished outside while they eat their Snickers?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I propose we immediately isolate the carriers of "fattening disease".
After all, it's infectious and it creates more casualties than ebola and the black plague combined! And since we don't know the vectors yet, other than "fat women", we should isolate anyone with a BMI over 25. In any case they shouldn't be allowed to travel. I mean, it might spread to Europe. Or even Africa, which has so far been mercifully untouched by "fattening disease"!
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
The summary says, "each served themselves more pasta than the "fat" woman had selected while taking less salad than she did."
The articles both say that the amount of food that the actress took was irrelevant. All that mattered was whether she was wearing the prosthesis (what the summary refers to as a "fat suit").
Given the way that they did the study though, I'm not terribly convinced. We're talking about 82 people here. Wouldn't it make more sense to monitor their behavior over multiple visits with multiple actresses? The behavior they note might simply be an accident of the grouping. If they happened to put the 41 people who prefer pasta to salad in the two sections that showed a preference for pasta, that could explain the results.
Note: I haven't read the paper. I'm going entirely by the results described in the two articles. However, this is exactly why studies should need to be reproduced before people start using them for recommending behavior changes.
This isn't "blaming" anyone. At no point was any "blame" made. At no point in the study did they ask the guys "Why did you eat so much pasta?" and at no point did anyone say "The fat lady made me do it."
This is nothing more than observed behaviour. Most of this type of behaviour is subconscious, so in many ways you probably have had a fat person grab your hand and shovel food down your throat.
This may also explain why the only person looking to lay blame on anyone appears to be you.
The process of shoving food down your throat is governed by a complex system with lots of variables and inputs. Some of these are under your conscious control, but many aren't. For instance, it takes a lot less willpower to stop eating when you feel full than when you're feeling hungry.
I get it, this is just another example of blame someone else rather than accept responsibility for your own actions.
Seems like a convenient way to avoid that this is a societal issue and not just an individual's personal failure.
Prepare for the experiment:
1. Gather one hour and fifty-one minutes of food and drink
2. Get comfortable
Perform the experiment:
4. Visit this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVCbIzeQb30
5. Report results.
SPOILER: AT 1:28:33 he says the word, "inconceivable"
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
It's got nothing to do with willpower. The point of the study is that people who otherwise eat normally and maintain a healthy weight unconsciously eat more when observing fat people eat first. Willpower is not an issue, they are not even aware of what is happening.
This is important. Adverts could use fat people to sell more of their product. Societies that have a lot of obese people make it harder for everyone to stay at a healthy weight, regardless of willpower.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This hall experiment seems like a good lesson explaining why correlation is not causation and how NOT to measure correlation.
1. First of all, they published only the mean and not the variance so we can’t tell how different the quantities were among the participants. Another data that is missing is the time and day of the different meals.
2. It seems the fat person was only the first person in the line so it’s very strange it affected the rest of the people waiting in the line who did not see her.
3. The experiment should have been made several times with the same group with actors of different genders and weights. Not with different groups with the same actor. That way you eliminate different artifacts that could influence the experiment: the gender bias of the groups towards men/women, different food intake of different people and, of course, the possibility that a different day of the week might influence how hungry you are.
4. The fact that people are taking more food to their plates doesn’t mean they are eating more.
5. It’s incredibly wrong and misleading to declare that this experiment can draw valid conclusions on anybody who is not a college senior aged 18-19 and is eating next to an obese woman roughly that age.
5. It seems to me that the article is more PR driven than science driven since it’s obvious this story has one purpose: to promote the book that is mentioned in the second link (yes, another f***ing diet book).
I think all the arguments I’ve made here make it clear that this “study” is nothing more than a publicity driven draft of a research and should be taken seriously.
"Time to bring on the public shame for fat people!"
Hell yeah, I personally could do without El Rushbo AND Michael Moore.
Studies involving a small (82), biased (coeds) number of college students who were primed (required to watch) are not science. "The conclusion was simple". As is anyone believing said conclusion.
Yet another case of a prior conclusion being reached by a fabricated "study". Groundwork for controlling people's diets.
Considering the bulk of human evolution has been spent hungry, looking for something to eat, it makes perfect sense to emulate people who appear to be the opposite of hungry.
.
Not only is (whatever they are eating) fundamentally safe, it's so abundant they're fat. For all but the last 50 years, those were purely positive cues.
Note the actress wrote a 50 lb fat suit....I'm curious if she was morbidly obese (ie 150lb fat suit, obviously unhealthy) if the same would still be true.
-Styopa
"The fat woman was actually an actress wearing a fat suit." It must have been too difficult to find an obese person in Illinois.
No, this was to reduce the number of variables in the experiment. Same woman, same hair color, same face, same eye color, etc, but different apparent body build.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Do remember those articles about how a person who reads facts that disagree with their beliefs actually digs in and is more convinced they are right?
Kinda wondering how it feels to be that guy.
It's called the backfire effect, popularly, if you get curious.
Is "taking more" the same as "eating more"? Did all the coeds clean their plates?
Ken
Any study that tells me something I don't like about myself is actually someone else's fault has to be accurate. These fat people are now making the rest of us fat! We need to pass some new laws (likely written by lobbyists for Hostess Twinkies) to put a stop to this! Won't someone please think of the (fat) children?!
This isn't "blaming" anyone. At no point was any "blame" made.
I would expect to see the same effect with alcohol. In the company of people that are drinking a lot, you are probably drinking more than your norm.
First time I read that I thought it said recycling.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Isn't this just an illustration that - no matter how we try to believe it was otherwise - standards level down?
If someone's stuffing herself silly then as long as you eat a bit less than she does you can get away with it because you're not the pig of the group.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if a similar situation existed around beer consumption, pinching things from the office, speeding or illegal parking etc.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm not quite sure.
I'm guessing that some aspect of why people are choosing to eat more is simply because food is life and we are wired to feel like we need to "compete" for food. If we see a spread of food that we are going to eat, and then see fat people near it, we might want to eat more for fear of not getting any. The same could be true for, say, the youngest child of six. Not because of the weight, but because they see their odds of getting food dwindle and they will try and eat as much as they can.
Alcohol is sort of the same, but I don't think for the same reasons. In the presence of someone who is an alcoholic, I don't think you start drinking a lot because you're worried they're going to drink everything, but instead you're drinking more simply to "keep up" in a social sense.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
no I think it was more they couldn;t find a fat person that would eat a salad.
Isn't it not just that one eats less when fraternising with slimmer people?