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Reduced food neophobia and food disgust in colorblind men

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Abstract

Food neophobia is the fear of new foods, and it is associated with negative health outcomes. Recent work suggests that it is negatively correlated with the ability to discriminate visually similar dishes, but only in color. This led to a novel prediction: that colorblindness would be negatively associated with food neophobia. Here, we replicated that colorblind men (n = 103) are less food neophobic than non-colorblind men (n = 273), even when participants are unaware that being colorblind or not was relevant to their selection. We extend these results to food disgust, and find that both food neophobia and food disgust increase with age in colorblind men, whereas they are stable in noncolorblind men. These results underscore the role of color perception on affective attitudes towards food, in the absence of demand characteristics or manipulation of color in images. Our results advance our understanding of non-perceptual and affective consequences of colorblindness. They also have possible implications for improving treatment approaches in cases of severe food neophobia.

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Data availability

Data are available on figshare: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.22674622.v1.

Notes

  1. Because Sun and Gauthier (2023) had not tested the effect of age in their study, we re-analyzed those results and found the age × color group interaction on agreeableness in that study (t = 2.101, p =  − .037). In that sample, agreeableness did not vary with age in non colorblind men (mean for young = 3.4, SD = .89; mean for old = 3.41, SD = .89) whereas it was lower for older colorblind men (mean for young = 3.83, SD = .71; mean for old = 3.57, SD = .88).

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to all our participants. The work was supported by the David K. Wilson Chair Research Fund from Vanderbilt University to Isabel Gauthier.

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This work was supported by the David K. Wilson Chair Research Fund from Vanderbilt University to Isabel Gauthier.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, 111 21st Avenue South, Nashville, TN, 37240, USA

    Isabel Gauthier & Bunmi Olatunji

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  1. Isabel Gauthier
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  2. Bunmi Olatunji
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Correspondence to Isabel Gauthier.

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All procedures in this study were approved by the Institutional Review Board at Vanderbilt Institute [IRB #222116] and conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and later amendments.

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Gauthier, I., Olatunji, B. Reduced food neophobia and food disgust in colorblind men. Motiv Emot 48, 198–208 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-023-10055-w

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