Consumption in Context
Description
131 undergraduate students from a university were recruited for participation in an experiment in exchange for course credit. 8 subjects failed to complete the survey or failed the attention check and their data was removed from analysis while one participant was removed for serving themselves a plate more than 3 SDs from the mean. The Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) was used to measure context dependence (Oltman, Raskin, & Witkin, 2013). This measure is a long-established, proprietary means for determining context independence in the psychology literature (see van Baaren et al., 2004 for a recent example). Participants are asked to find simple shapes embedded in larger, more complicated shapes. Because context dependence is associated with a lower ability to disembed information, lower values on the GEFT indicate greater levels of context dependence (range = 1-18) Participants signed a consent form to participate in a study involving visual tasks and providing feedback on a new snack product after which they were given a participant number. In order to minimize the effects of potential demand characteristics, participants were not informed that their serving and consumption behavior was being measured. Participants then served themselves a plate of a pretzel snack to leave at the station that corresponded with their participant number. In both conditions, a sign was provided that said “Please take some pretzels” and in one condition, an exemplar plate was set up that demonstrated a 150g portion of pretzels identical to the one used in study 1. The control condition included the same sign with no exemplar plate. If participants asked for further direction for a desired serving behavior, they were simply told “Take as few or as many as you would like.” Pretzel snacks were chosen because they are a common, recognizable snack item without a strong flavor that could repel some participants. Pretzels have also been used before in consumer research (Aydinoğlu & Krishna, 2011). Participants were then escorted to a separate room to complete the GEFT, during which time their plates were weighed. When finished, they were asked to return to the first room to eat as little or as much as they would like. When the participants were done they completed an "End of Meal Survey" containing questions related to demographic variables in addition to other individual difference measures related to food. During the End of Meal Survey, the participants’ plates were weighed again. They then returned to the room to sign a debriefing form before being dismissed.