Sociological Argument

The authors put forth five studies in support of this theory, but I will describe only the finding from the first one here. In this study, participants first served soup into a bowl, attempting to recreate a target portion and then also estimated the magnitude by which soup in a different bowl was more or less than a target portion of soup. In this way, the researchers measured estimation bias and serving bias for a total of 7 different bowls that ranged in size and ratio between the inner bowl and outer edge. Results of this study showed that perceptual biases drove the serving bias: because people misestimated the amount of soup in bowls with larger and smaller ratios, they over and under-served soup when attempting to replicate a target

In five of the ten choice pairs, one option would be healthy and the other would be junk food (e.g., apples or brownie). Participants would be told that they would receive one of the items they chose, making their choice more consequential. Those in the audience present condition would read that the other participants in the study would have access to their choices and would be asked to form impressions about them based on the choices they made. This would not be true for those in the audience absent condition, who would be making their choices in isolation. The main DV of interest in this study is the total number of junk food items each participant

First, if the process is solely driven by social mechanisms, there would be no effect of manipulation in the audience absent condition. Without external reasons to avoid signaling a particular desire, participants should not diverge from the choices of an out-group, and therefore should choose the same amount of junk food as the baseline control condition. Lastly, a strong version of this account would predict no differences between the control condition and the negative association condition, although it is likely that there would be somewhat of a decrease in junk food choice when highlight the negative impact consuming junk food has on