Abstract
People are often exposed to situations where they observe other people eating, such as communal eating. According to the social modeling effect of eating, people tend to match the amount they eat to their eating companions. However, it is unclear how eating observation influences people’s appetitive motivational state, such as hunger and satiation. The current research aimed to investigate the effect of eating observation on the observer’s attention bias towards food, which is indicative of appetitive motivational state. We adopted a within subject design with three conditions (Eating Observation (EO) need to define if use abbreviations later, Food Only and No Food) by manipulating the video content in each trial. Attention bias towards food was measured with Modified Stroop Task. We hypothesized that there would be an interaction effect between conditions and Stroop condition (word type) on reaction time for Stroop Task, controlling for hunger and restrictive eating style. Moreover, we hypothesized this interaction effect will be moderated by the empathy score, in which eating observation will induce stronger attention bias towards food for people with higher empathy. We found significant difference in attention bias towards food between the EO and NF conditions, as well as between FO and NF, demonstrating exposure to food stimuli increases people’s attention bias towards food-related stimuli; however, there was no significant difference in AB towards food-related stimuli between EO and FO condition, suggesting the motor aspect of eating alone did not impact people’s food-related attention bias. Furthermore, the three-way interaction among condition, word type and empathy was not significant. Finally, our result demonstrated BMI, dietary restraint and empathy were all significant predictors for participants’ overall reaction time. Current study expanded our understanding for social modeling of eating and behavior mirroring by examining the influence of eating observation on the observer’s appetitive motivational state and how empathy plays a role in this effect.