Food preferences : role of learning

• The process of learning: classical conditioning

  Flavour-flavour learning 

  • This is when we develop a preference for a new food because of its association with a flavour we already like
  • Because of our innate preference for sweetness, we learn to prefer many new foods by sweetening them (e.g. adding sugar to porridge)
  • According to flavour-flavour learning principles, this association eventually leads to liking of the new food on its own (e.g. liking porridge) 
• process of learning: operant conditioning

  • Children are often directly reinforced for their food preferences, mainly by parents
  • The child is given rewards for eating certain foods 
  • However, it is difficult to get children to develop a preference for certain foods (e.g. vegetables) using rewards
  • So classical conditioning is probably the more powerful form of food preference learning
• social influences: social learning theory

  • SLT explains social influences on food preference through modelling and imitation
  • Children will acquire the food preferences of role models they observe eating certain foods
  • This is especially so if the model appears to be rewarded (e.g. they enjoy eating it or are praised)
  • They are also more likely to imitate the model’s food preferences if they identify with the model (e.g. parent)
  • This is adaptive because it means children eat foods that are obviously safe because others are eating them (otherwise toddlers would eat dangerous foods)
• Social influences : family influences

  • Parents’ food preferences have powerful effects on food preferences of children
  • Perhaps because parents are ‘gatekeepers’ of their children’s eating
• social influences: peer influences

  • Birch (1980) found that school children changed their preferences for vegetables after observing other children at lunchtime
  • They changed their preferences so that they preferred the same vegetables as the other children, showing the power of peer influence on food preference 
• social influences : media influences

  • Television advertising is an example of media influences on food preferences
  • Young people who watch TV encounter many adverts for ‘unhealthy’ foods (high fat, salt and sugar)
  • These adverts are often marked by ‘fun’ related themes and the products themselves promoted by characters children identify with 
• cultural influences

  • Rozin (1984) – cultural influences are the single most reliable predictor of food preferences, especially family eating patterns
  • We learn when, what and how much to eat around the family table (Vabo and Hansen, 2014)
  • We learn the cultural ‘rules’ of preference early and these are powerful enough to overcome innate aversions
• cultural influence: cultural norms

  • Cultural ideals and norms play a powerful role in determining food preference and what is seen as a ‘proper meal’
  • E.g. meat and vegetables 
  • E.g. The ‘rule’ that the main Sunday meal has to be a roast dinner (in British households)
• cultural influences: meat-eating

  • Many culturally determined food preferences centre around meat
  • In the UK and France (and many other countries) there is a cultural tradition to eat all of the animal
  • This includes offal such as kidneys, liver, etc.
  • However, in the USA they consume a lot of meat in the form of steaks but they definitely do not like offal
• Cultural Influences: Culture and Learning

  • We associate many of the foods we eat and enjoy as adults with feelings of security and happy experiences growing up
  • They may be linked in memory to enjoyable special occasions spent with family and friends
  • These occasions with family and friends would always be marked by culturally specific food choices (‘feasts’)
• A03:

  • limitation - classical conditioning explanations of food preference, , is that they may in fact be better at explaining food dislike rather than food preference
  • much stronger evidence for classical conditioning explaining food aversion than for food preference
  • example - Baeyens et al. (1996) found that if an untried food is paired with a soapy-flavoured chemical - leads to a long lasting aversion (dislike) to that food
  • suggests that the flavour-flavour learning explanation is much more efficient in explaining food aversions rather than food preferences
• A03:

  • limitation of the social learning explanation of food preferences, through TV, is that they may only have short-term effects
  • For example, Hare-Bruun et al. (2011) found that children who watched the most TV also had the worst food preferences
  • However, this link was much weaker when the researchers followed up on the children 6 years later, and had disappeared altogether for girls
  • This suggests that the social learning effects of television on food preference are short-term and other factors such as close friends may play more of a role in food preference as children get older
• A03:

  • strength of the learning explanations of food preferences is that there are real life examples of the power of culture and family on food preference
  • Rozin (2006) uses the example of eating chilli in certain cultures
  • Rozin suggests that people innately dislike chilli because it produces a burning sensation
  • However, in cultures where chilli is repeatedly used in cooking, children are gradually and repeatedly exposed to it until everyone is a chilli liker by the age of 6
  • This suggests that family and cultural influences play a powerful role in food preference
• A03:

  • strength of the SLT explanation for food preference there is -research to support it
  • Jansen and Tenney (2001) gave children two different types of yoghurt drinks to try 
  • Their teacher praised and showed signs of enjoyment while drinking one of these drinks
  • They found that children said they preferred the taste of the same yoghurt drink that the teacher had praised
  • This supports the SLT explanation of food preferences because it suggests that, because the children identify with and look up to their teacher, they are more likely to imitate the teacher’s behaviour