The Psychology of Eating: From Healthy to Disordered Behavior

Food Choice 39

Associative learning

Associative learning refers to the impact of contingent factors on behavior.
At times these contingent factors can be considered reinforcers, in line with
operant conditioning. In terms of food choice, research has explored the
impact of pairing food cues with aspects of the environment. In particular,
food has been paired with a reward, used as the reward, and paired with
physiological consequences.

Rewarding food choice
Some research has examined the effect of rewarding food choice, as in
“If you eat your vegetables I will be pleased with you.” For example,
Birch, Zimmerman, and Hind (1980) gave children food in association
with positive adult attention compared with more neutral situations. This
was shown to increase food preference. Similarly, Barthomeuf et al. (2007)
explored whether the emotion expressed on people’s faces could influence
food preferences. Men and women were exposed to a series of pictures of
liked and disliked food that were either on their own or accompanied by
people eating them and expressing one of three emotions: disgust, pleasure,
or neutrality. The results showed that the expression of the eater influenced
ratings of preference, but this depended not only on the expression used
but also on the food category. In particular, the desire to eat a disliked food
increased if the person pictured eating it was expressing pleasure, but this
emotion had no effect on the desire to eat a liked food. Further, the desire
to eat a liked food decreased if the eater was expressing disgust or was being
neutral, but these emotions had no effect on a disliked food. Therefore,
pairing a food with emotion changes the preference for that food, but this
is influenced by both the emotion and the person’s prior food preferences.
The impact of emotional expression was also explored by Rousset et al.
(2008) using a similar design, but the focus was on meat. The results showed
that preference for meat was increased following viewing another person
eating meat with a neutral or happy expression compared to a disgusted
expression. One intervention introduced a “kid’s choice” school lunch pro-
gram whereby children were given tokens for eating fruit or vegetables which
could be later traded in for prizes. The results showed that preference and
consumption increased at 2 weeks after the program (Hendy, Williams, and
Camise, 2005). However, 7 months later levels had returned to baseline.
Rewarding food choice seems to improve food preferences, although this
may not persist when the rewards are removed.