Research ReportPeer influence on pre-adolescent girls’ snack intake: Effects of weight status
Introduction
A host of factors aside from physiological needs can have profound effects on children's eating and weight status. Noteworthy among these factors is the social environment. As primary sources of socialization, parents and peers are likely role models for youths’ eating habits and food consumption. Although several studies have looked at the influence of parents on children's food consumption (e.g., Faith, Scanlon, Birch, Francis, & Sherry, 2004; Klesges et al., 1983; Koivisto, Fellenius, & Sjoden, 1994; Laessle, Uhl, & Lindel, 2001), few experimental studies have tested the effects of peer influence on how much youths choose to eat. This is surprising given the emphasis placed on the importance of peer influence on youths’ development (Parker, Rubin, Erath, Wojslawowicz, & Buskirk, 2006) and the recognition that the type of influence exerted on youths from parents is of a different nature from that exerted by peers (Huon, Lim, & Gunewardene, 2000).
After reviewing the literature on social influences on eating in adults, Herman and his colleagues (Herman, Roth, & Polivy, 2003) developed a normative framework to account for the effects of others on food intake. At its most basic level, the model posits that palatable food motivates eating, while the presence of others operates to determine when eating stops. That is, when eating with others, and in absence of clear guidelines, people use the behavior of others as an indication of “appropriate” eating. The amount that is appropriate to eat will depend on the social context (i.e., how much others are eating) and situations differ in the extent to which they increase or inhibit food intake. Presumably, people use the amount eaten by others to regulate their own intake to avoid incurring the stigma of excessive eating (Maykovich, 1978) and also because they believe that doing so will lead others to like and accept them (see Deutsch & Gerard, 1955 for an analysis of normative conformity).
Individuals’ concerns with eating too much in front of others do not seem misguided. A well-substantiated literature indicates that negative stereotypes apply to those who eat excessively (Vartanian, Herman, & Polivy, 2006). Research shows that a set of negative personality traits is attributed to people who are overweight and those who eat large amounts. It is also widely assumed that people become overweight because of a lack of self-control around food (DeJong & Kleck, 1986; Puhl, Schwartz, & Brownell, 2005). Overweight people are stereotyped as lazy, self-indulgent, unattractive, lacking self-esteem, socially inept, uncooperative, and intellectually slow (Allon, 1982; DeJong, 1993; Harris, 1990; Hebl & Heatherton, 1998; Madey & Ondrus, 1999).
A corollary of weight stigmatization is that overweight individuals may attempt to decrease their food intake in front of others to avoid incurring the stigmas related to excessive eating. In fact, de Luca and Spigelman (1979) found that obese college students ate close to nothing in the presence of a lean confederate, but consumed a large amount in company of an obese experimental confederate. Normal-weight participants’ intake was unaffected by the confederate's weight. De Luca and Spigelman suggested that obese participants ate less in the presence of a normal-weight confederate due to self-consciousness and ate more with an overweight participant due to solidarity. The self-consciousness interpretation is similar to Maykovich's contention that overweight individuals suppress their intake in front of others in order to counteract the attribution that their excessive weight is due to excessive eating (Maykovich, 1978).
Peer sociometric assessments show that negative stereotypes and weight stigmatization start early in life. Children as young as three years of age already hold negative attitudes towards obesity (Cramer & Steinwert, 1998). Youths are less inclined to seek the company of overweight peers, and they do not enjoy interacting with them as much as they do with lean kids (Bell & Morgan, 2000). Preschool pupils believe that overweight children have more negative personality and behavioral characteristics. This belief is so pervasive that children report that it would be more desirable to have a physical handicap than to be overweight (Sigelman, Miller, & Whitworth, 1986). Overweight children themselves hold negative attitudes toward overweight individuals (Lerner & Korn, 1972; Staffieri, 1967). Although weight stigmatization in children has been linked to several outcomes (e.g., Faith, Leone, Ayers, Moonseong, & Pietrobelli, 2002; Storch et al., 2007), it is not clear whether the presence of others on eating operates in the same way on pre-adolescents’ as it does in adults. This population is of particular interest given the high prevalence of weight-related issues (Halvarsson, Lunner, Westerberg, Anteson, & Sjoden, 2002) and the greater influence of peers on eating behavior during the transitional phase from childhood to adolescence (Sinton & Birch, 2005).
The present study assesses the effects of peer influence on lean and overweight pre-adolescent girls’ snack intake as a function of the co-eaters’ weight status. The weight status of the participants was varied by studying weight discordant dyads composed of one lean and one overweight participant, and weight concordant dyads in which both members of the dyads were either lean or overweight. Eating was “incidental” to what was described to the participants as the experimental task. Youths were instructed to work on a sorting task while having access to a sizeable amount of snack food. This procedure makes it possible to examine the mutual influence of two “freely eating” individuals on one another rather than using a confederate accomplice to the experimenter (see also Clendenen, Herman, & Polivy, 1994; de Castro (1991), de Castro (1994); Herman, Koenig-Nobert, Peterson, & Polivy, 2005 for similar methodologies). This paradigm does not involve working on a task, which might influence the participants’ intake, such as a forced tasting task in which participants are required to at least taste the food offered.
Based on studies on social influences in adults (de Luca & Spigelman, 1979; Maykovich, 1978), we predicted that overweight girls would eat more when paired with overweight girls than when paired with lean eating companions, whereas normal-weight participants eating with overweight peers were expected to eat similar amounts than those eating with lean eating companions. Consistent with a normative account of social influences on eating, we also expected that the participants’ intake would predict their partner's level of eating. The basis for this hypothesis is that in the absence of clear guidelines, people use the behavior of others to determine how much is appropriate to eat in a given situation (Herman et al., 2003).
Section snippets
Participants
Participants for this study included 23 lean (at or below the 85th BMI percentile) and 23 overweight or at risk for becoming overweight (>85th BMI percentile) females between 8 and 12 years of age (Table 1). Families were recruited from newspaper ads and from our database of families who have volunteered for previous laboratory studies. Parents were screened by phone for their daughter's height, weight and a brief medical history. Children were excluded if they were below the 10th BMI
Results
Participants’ snack consumption was predicted by the weight status of the participant, F(1,42)=4.67, p<0.05, and the weight status of the co-eater, F(1,42)=5.65, p<0.05 (Fig. 1). Differences of least square means indicated that overweight girls paired with overweight partners ate significantly more than overweight participants eating with normal-weight peers, t(29.8)=−2.62, p<0.05. Overweight/overweight participants also ate more than lean/lean participants, t(23)=−2.81, p<0.01 and more than
Discussion
This study assessed the effects of peer influence on snack intake in lean and overweight pre-adolescent girls. The results indicate that the amount consumed by the co-eater predicted their partners’ food consumption in all conditions, suggesting that peer influence was one of the mechanisms accounting for the participants’ snack intake. However, the results pertaining to the amount of food consumed indicate that social influences did not operate in the same way in overweight and in lean
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