Part 3

Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think
by Brian Wansink, Ph.D.

(Page 3 of 3)

After the meals were over, the first thing we discovered was that both groups of people drank about the same amount of wine-all of it. This was not so surprising. It was only one glass of wine and it was a cold night. Where they differed was in how much food they ate and how long they lingered at their table.

Compared to those unlucky diners given wine with North Dakota labels, people who thought they had been given a free glass of California wine ate 11 percent more of their food-19 of the 24 even cleaned their plates. They also lingered an average of 10 minutes longer at their table (64 minutes). They stayed pretty much until the waitstaff starting dropping hints that the next seating would be starting soon.

The night was not quite as magical for those given wine with the North Dakota label. Not only did they leave more food on their plates, this probably wasn't much of a meal to remember, because it went by so fast. North Dakota wine drinkers sat down, drank, ate, paid, and were out in 55 minutes-less than an hour. For them, this was clearly not a special meal, it was just food.

Exact same meals, exact same wine. Different labels, different reactions.

Now, to a cold-eyed skeptic, there should have been no difference between the two groups. They should have eaten the same amount and enjoyed it the same.

They didn't. They mindlessly ate. That is, once they were given a free glass of "California" wine, they said to themselves: "This is going to be good." Once they concluded it was going to be good, their experience lined up to confirm their expectations. They no longer had to stop and think about whether the food and wine were really as good as they thought. They had already decided.

Of course, the same thing happened to the diners who were given the "North Dakota" wine. Once they saw the label, they set themselves up for disappointment. There was no halo; there was a shadow. And not only was the wine bad, the entire meal fell short.

After our studies are over, we "debrief" people-often by e-mail-and tell them what the study was about and what results we expect. For instance, with our different wine studies, we might say, "We think the average person drinking what they believe is North Dakota wine will like their meal less than those given the 'California' wine." We then ask the kicker: "Do you think you were influenced by the state's name you saw on the label?" Almost all will give the exact same answer: "No, I wasn't."

In the thousands of debriefings we've done for hundreds of studies, nearly every person who was "tricked" by the words on a label, the size of a package, the lighting in a room, or the size of a plate said, "I wasn't influenced by that." They might acknowledge that others could be "fooled," but they don't think they were. That is what gives mindless eating so much power over us-we're not aware it's happening.

Even when we do pay close attention we are suggestible-and even when it comes to cold, hard numbers. If you ask people if there are more or less than 50 calories in an apple, most will say more. When you ask them how many, the average person will say, "66." If you had instead asked if there were more or less than 150 calories in an apple, most would say less. When you ask them how many, the average person would say, "114." People unknowingly anchor or focus on the number they first hear and let that bias them.

A while back, I teamed up with two professor friends of mine-Steve Hoch and Bob Kent-to see if anchoring influences how much food we buy in grocery stores. We believed that grocery shoppers who saw numerical signs such as "Limit 12 Per Person" would buy much more than those who saw signs such as "No Limit Per Person." To nail down the psychology behind this, we repeated this study in different forms, using different numbers, different promotions (like "2 for $2" versus "1 for $1"), and in different supermarkets and convenience stores. By the time we finished, we knew that any sign with a number promotion leads us to buy 30 to 100 percent more than we normally would.

After the research was completed and published in the Journal of Marketing Research, another friend and I were in the checkout line at a grocery store, where I saw a sign advertising gum, "10 packs for $2." I was eagerly counting out 10 packs onto the conveyer belt, when my friend commented, "Didn't you just publish a big research paper on that?"

We're all tricked by our environment. Even if we "know it" in our head, most of the time we have way too much on our mind to remember it and act on it. That's why it's easier to change our environment than our mind.

Copyright © 2006 by Brian Wansink, Ph.D.

About the Author

Brian Wansink, Ph.D., is an Iowa native and earned his doctorate at Stanford University. He is the John S. Dyson Professor of Marketing and of Nutritional Science at Cornell University, where he is Director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab. The author of three profesional books on food and consumer behavior, he lives with his family in Ithaca, New York, where he enjoys both French food and French fries each week.