Everyday Research Methods

Does loud music make you eat bad food?

That sounds delicious, thank you! Photo credit: Nathan Motoyama/EyeEm/Getty Images

June is food month on the ERM blog! This story's about the headline, Loud music makes you eat bad food?!?!?Whaaaaaaatever!

QRock 100.7 was one of several news outlets that had fun describing this study for its readers. 

Let's find out what kind of study was conducted to test the claim. The Q100.7 journalist wrote:  

A new study found loud music makes us more likely to order unhealthy food when we’re dining out.  A new study in Sweden found loud music in restaurants makes us more likely to choose unhealthy menu options.  And we’re more likely to go with something healthy like a salad when the music ISN’T so loud.

Researchers went to a café and played music at different decibel levels to see how it affected what people ordered.  Either 55 decibels, which is like background chatter or the hum from a refrigerator . . . or 70 decibels, which is closer to a vacuum cleaner.

And when they cranked it to up 70, people were 20% more likely to order something unhealthy, like a burger and fries.

They did it over the course of several days and kept getting the same results.  So the study seems pretty legit.

a) OK, go: What seems to be the independent variable in this study? What were its levels? How was it operationalized?

b)  What seems to be the dependent variable? How was it operationalized? Think specifically about how they might have operationalized the concept "unhealthy."

c) Do you think this study counts as an experiment or a quasi-experiment? Explain your answer. 

d) This study can be called a "field study" or perhaps a "field experiment". Why?

e) To what extent can this study support the claim that loud music makes you eat bad food? Apply covariance, temporal precedence, and internal validity to your response.

f) If you were manipulating the loudness of the music for a study like this, how might you do so in order to ensure it was the music, and not other restaurant factors, were responsible for the increase in ordering "unhealthy" food?

g) The Q100.7 journalist argues that the study seems "pretty legit." What do you think the journalist meant by this phrase? 

h) The study on food and music volume are summarized in an open-access conference abstract, published here. You might be surprised to read, contrary to the journalist's report, that the field study was conducted on only two days--with one day at 50db and the other at 70 db. How does this change your thoughts about the study? 

g) Conference presentations are not quite the same as peer-reviewed journal publications. Take a moment (and use your PSYCinfo skills) to decide if the authors, Biswas, Lund, and Szocs, have published this work yet in a peer reviewed journal.  Why might journalists choose to cover a story that has only been presented at a conference instead of peer-reviewed? Is this a good practice in general? 

 

 

Claim: Cultural identity impacts the food you like

Under what conditions did Southerners find this dish especially tasty? Credit: Andre Baranowski/Getty Images

I was skeptical at first of the causal claim in the headline, From Collards To Maple Syrup, How Your Identity Impacts The Food You Like. After all, in order to support a causal claim, you need to manipulate a variable, and how can we manipulate cultural identity? 

Before reading on, think about:

a) What word in the headline makes this a causal claim?

b) What foods might be associated with your own cultural identity (or identities?)

Here are some elements of the journalist's story. NPR reported about...

...a recent study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, authored by Jay Van Bavel, social psychologist at New York University and his colleagues. The researchers found that the stronger your sense of social identity, the more you are likely to enjoy the food associated with that identity. The subjects of this study were Southerners and Canadians, two groups with proud food traditions.

 The first experiment, containing 103 people, found that the more strongly someone self-identifies as Southern, the more they would expect Southern food to taste good, food like fried catfish or black-eyed peas.

c) In the study above, what are the two variables? Do they seem to be manipulated or measured?

d) Given your answer to question c) is this study really an "experiment"? 

e) Can this study (above) support the causal claim that "identity impacts the food you like"? What are some alternative explanations? Hint: Think about temporal precedence and third variable explanations. 

Here's the description of a second study:

In a second experiment, containing 151 people, researchers also found that when Southerners were reminded of their Southernness — primed, in psychology speak — their perception of the tastiness of Southern food was even higher. That is, the more Southern a person was feeling at that moment, the better the food tasted [compared to a group who was not primed].

e) What are the two variables in the study above? Were the variables manipulated or measured?

f) Given your answer to question e) is this study really an "experiment"? 

g) Can this study support the claim that "identity impacts the food you like"? 

They found a similar result when taste-testing with Canadians, finding that Canadian test subjects only preferred the taste of maple syrup over honey in trials when they were first reminded of their Canadian identity.

h) You know the drill: For the study above, what kind of study was is? What are its variables? 

i) Challenge question: Can you tell if the independent variable in the Canadian study was manipulated as between groups or within groups? 

In sum, it appears that two out of the three studies reviewed by this NPR article were experimental, so they're more likely to support the causal claim about "identity impacting the food you like." The journalist calls attention to this manipulation of identity in this description:

The relationship between identity and food preference is not new. However, the use of priming to induce identity makes this study different from its predecessors.

"Priming is like opening a filing drawer and bringing to your attention all the things that are in the drawer," says Paul Rozin, food psychologist at University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the study. "You can't really change peoples' identities in a 15-minute setting, but you can make one of their identities more salient, and that's what they've done in this study."

j) What other ways might you manipulate cultural identity in an experimental design? 

Good news! The empirical journal article is open-access here. When you read it, you'll see that the journalist simplified the design of the studies for her article in NPR.