Establishing healthy eating habits and healthy social relationships are critical to children?s well-being. This project tests the hypothesis that children?s own decisions about what to eat are guided by what people from their sociocultural ingroups endorse (rather than just by how foods taste and look). It also tests the hypothesis that eating together can foster positive social relationships, including between members of different sociocultural groups. Together, the studies in this proposal will suggest interventions to improve children?s diets as well as contribute new tools for reducing children?s prejudice.
Developmental scientists have devoted little attention to understanding children?s development in the food domain. The goals of the present proposal are threefold: (1) to investigate how social information provided by other people affects children?s food choices; (2) to test how eating together impacts children's social attitudes ? including toward people who are different from themselves; (3) to analyze how children's exposure to diversity affects their evaluations of food and people. To study these questions, the project uses methods and theories from social cognitive development and applies them to the food domain. Study 1 tests the effects of learning about other people's foods preferences on children's food evaluations and behavior. Studies 2 and 3 test the effects of eating together on children's liking of other people, including evaluations of people from different sociocultural groups. Senior personnel will include and mentor women and students from underrepresented backgrounds in research. The present proposal will include, and benefit from, the full participation of such individuals as scientists involved in each of the studies.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
