Work

Children expect national group membership to guide food choice

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: = 6.90 years) to sort familiar foods, unfamiliar foods, and disgust elicitors based on who they believed ate the item: people from their national ingroup, people from a national outgroup, both, or neither. We also measured children's own food preferences and ingroup bias. Both studies provided evidence that children expected ingroup members to eat familiar foods and expected outgroup members to eat unfamiliar foods. Interestingly, children's cultural expectations about food may also be linked to their own food preferences and bias. Children with stronger personal preferences for familiar foods over unfamiliar foods were more likely to think that only people from their ingroup would eat those foods, and children with more bias against a national outgroup were less likely to expect outgroup members to eat familiar foods. These results demonstrate that children do have a cultural understanding of food choice and that their personal experiences and preferences linked to their social expectations.

Source: Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2025.106437

Authors: Bailey Immel, Shreya Sodhi, Zoe Liberman

Institution: University of California, Santa Barbara

Language: English

Topic: Social and Intergroup Psychology

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,500

Funder: National Science Foundation