Children's use of adult testimony to guide food selection

Abstract

We hypothesized that children's reliance on adults' testimony regarding food choices would diminish when adults were shown to be unreliable informants by expressing liking for foods the children disliked. In 3 studies, 3-to 6-year-old children observed an adult expressing liking for food and nonfood items that were either the same as or opposite the child's stated hedonic assessments. Even after having observed an adult express liking for stimuli the children disliked, children still selected the item which the adult identified as hedonically positive. Children were more likely to select the stimulus identified as hedonically positive by the adult when the stimulus was food (as opposed to non-food), and when the adult's hedonic assessment was provided as an absolute ("I think this is yummy.") as opposed to a comparative statement ("I like this one better."). The results imply that an adult's identification of a food as hedonically positive serves as an important guide to children's food selection, even when children recognize that adults have very different hedonic assessments of foods from themselves. Providing information to children that a food is palatable in absolute terms also appears to shape children's food selection more powerfully than providing the information in comparative terms.

Exploring seafood socialization in the kindergarten: an intervention’s influence on children’s attitudes

“…In our sample, there were less favourable attitudes towards salmon and trout, which contrasted with Honkanen and colleague's (2004) study of older children. A possible explanation may be young children's preferences for the soft textures of processed products (Zeinstra et al, 2007).. We confirmed our expectations that children, to a much higher degree than adults, have a tendency to build their attitudes on positive and negative affective associations (Borgers et al, 2000;Aikmanet al, 2006;Lumeng et al, 2008). Children with positive attitudes towards seafood explained that eating seafood made them happy, while those who did not like seafood felt disgusted while eating it.…”

“…However, children's limited cognitive abilities may limit the effect of attitude change (John, 1999). They have a higher tendency than adults to build their attitudes on affect and hedonistic feelings (Borgers, et al 2000;Lumeng et al, 2008). This may be a reason why children and young consumers are less concerned about healthy food (Berg et al, 2000;Honkanen et al, 2004).…”

Evolution, Development, and the Emergence of Disgust

“…-426-what not to eat may rely more heavily on listening to trusted adults and imitating their food choices, which does not require disgust (Lumeng, Cardinal, Jankowski, Kaciroti, and Gelman, 2008;Shutts et al, 2013;Shutts, Kinzler, McKee, and Spelke, 2009). Other earlyemerging computational mechanisms may also contribute to the avoidance of certain categories of potentially harmful substances (e.g., Wertz and Wynn, 2014), and again these likely arise independently of disgust.…”

Low-income women's conceptualizations of emotional- and stress-eating

“…This may be one route via which using food to regulate emotion or reward oneself following a difficult or stressful day becomes a learned behavior in children. Furthermore, modeling powerfully shapes children’s eating behaviors (Birch, 1980; Frazier, Gelman, Kaciroti, Russell, & Lumeng, 2012; Lumeng, Cardinal, Jankowski, Kaciroti, & Gelman, 2008). Thus, children may learn these behaviors from adults who model using food to manage emotion or stress.…”