Social facilitation of eating: why we eat more with friends

Let's see what social facilitation of eating is and how it influences our eating.

It is easy to see that we usually eat more when we are with friends than when we are alone.

But what is the underlying phenomenon? In this article we will discover what the social facilitation of eating consists ofWhat is its explanation, in which circumstances it has more effect and in which, on the contrary, it is attenuated.

What is the social facilitation of eating?

The social facilitation of the food is the psychological phenomenon by which the fact of being accompanied by friends, family or acquaintances while we eat causes us to have a certain tendency to eat more food than we would if we were alone. than we would if we were alone or in the company of strangers. According to this principle, as long as we are alone, we will eat light meals or at least less copious meals than we would if we were surrounded by people in our circle.

The reader may be surprised and even against the hypothesis of the social facilitation of food, but we only have to remember and think about what (or how much) we had for dinner the last time we dined in the company of a group of friends, and compare it with what we usually eat on any given night in the company of ourselves, at home (if we live alone).

In fact, the studies carried out in this respect have even managed to express in a figure the difference in intake that occurs between the two situations. According to these conclusions we would be eating 48% more than usual when we do so in the company of a group of friends.. Several explanations have been given in this regard that attempt to find the logic behind the social facilitation of food. We will explore some of them in the following points.

In 2019, the Psychology faculty at the University of Birmingham, led by Dr. Helen Ruddock, published a meta-study compiling data from 42 previous papers on the social facilitation of eating. This research has greatly enriched the understanding of this concept and has given us a deeper understanding of its characteristics.

Evolutionary hypothesis: the equitable sharing of limited resources

A curious explanation of this phenomenon is evolutionary in nature. According to this theory, the social facilitation of food would have its origin in the way human beings fed themselves in the Paleolithic and Mesolithic eras.that is, when societies were hunter-gatherer societies. In such a context, food was scarce, and even several meals a day (sometimes not even one) were not guaranteed.

Given such hostile conditions, getting food for the group became a social event for the whole tribe, and everyone ate together, as much as they could, because they did not know when they would next have the opportunity to get a prey or gather enough fruits to nourish themselves again, sharing the experience as a group.

It could be a social event or simply the intention to eat as much of the available food as possible before it was eaten by others, since we are talking about a situation in which such food was extremely scarce and access to it was therefore very restricted. It is logical to think that, when faced with a source of nutrition, the individual would try to acquire the maximum amount in the shortest possible time, since once it was exhausted, he would not know when he would find more.

Therefore, the evolutionary hypothesis would explain the social facilitation of food as a behavior that would have been imprinted in some way. a behavior that would have somehow been engraved in our unconscious behavioral tendencies and that would take us back to a and that would take us back to a bygone era in which eating in a group was synonymous with trying to satiate oneself to overcome the period of hunger that would follow and that we would not know how long it might last.

Eating in the company of strangers

However, it is not enough to be in a group, eating together with other human beings for the social facilitation effect of eating to appear automatically. One key detail is that these people must be close to us. these people must be close to us, otherwise the effect does notOtherwise, the effect does not take effect. In these cases, precisely the opposite phenomenon occurs, and that is that people tend not to eat much in order to convey a more positive image.

This may be because we try to show a too impulsive image, and in the culinary context we want to make it clear, when we are in front of strangers, that we are able to control ourselves and eat only what is necessary, without falling into excess. In addition, this effect is particularly noticeable in certain groups of people, this effect is particularly noticeable in certain groupsThis effect is particularly noticeable in certain groups, according to studies carried out on the subject.

The first of these would be women who eat with male strangers, as opposed to the opposite case. The data show that women are more concerned about controlling their food intake than men.. Although the explanation is not clear, one hypothesis suggests that what this behavior would seek would be an unconscious approval from their hosts, because of their evident impulse control.

The second case in which we can observe the opposite phenomenon of social facilitation of eating is in the case of overweight people who eat in the company of other individuals with whom they do not have a close bond (which is the key to this). (which is the key to this happening). As in the previous assumption, what the research finds is that these people tend to eat significantly less food than when they are in the company of their closest group.

Therefore, what can be deduced is that there are some groups, such as women and people with obesity (and perhaps others that have not yet been contemplated in the studies carried out to date) where stereotypes, fear of being judged and other variables may have more weight when it comes to generating an attitude towards food than the social facilitation of food itself.

The problem of social facilitation of food today

However, what in ancient times could have been a very efficient system to ensure that no member of the tribe would go hungry when food was available, today would be causing a new problem. Social facilitation of food could be very useful when food resources were scarce. could be very useful when food resources were limited.But today, where we can find all the food we want at any time, the situation is very different.

What we find today is a context in which leisure lunches and dinners in the company of family and friends are synonymous with celebration and usually with food excesses. There are frequent meetings in which the attendees, between laughter and conversations, do not stop eating starters, main courses, desserts and a large amount of drinks, making up a quantity of calories extremely superior to the necessary ones.

If it is an isolated event, it may not be a problem, beyond the fact that it is a more than safe way to eat.If it is an isolated event, it may not be a problem, beyond a more than certain heavy digestion (or a good hangover, if the excess has also gone by the alcoholic route). However, if these meetings become a regular occurrence throughout the week, we are likely to begin to suffer the after-effects on our body, which may affect our body mass index, but also our metabolism or our cholesterol.

If we find ourselves immersed in this type of dynamics, it is best to be aware of it and limit our intake to what our body needs, trying to cope with the impulse of social facilitation of food. Of course, this behavior can (and should) be accompanied by healthy physical exercise routines, even if they consist only of getting into the habit of going for a walk every day.

What we must avoid at all costs is to fall into a state of habitual sedentary lifestyle, because if we are in the habit of attending lunches and dinners with our friends, the social facilitation of food can establish a lethal combination for our health.

Behavior in other species

The study of social facilitation of eating has not been limited to humans. Some work has focused on on observing feeding behaviors in species as diverse as rats and chickens, among others.among others. This phenomenon has also been observed in them, and has given rise to different hypotheses about the function it could be fulfilling in them.

Some researchers suggest that in these individuals, when eating in a group, an internal confrontation would be taking place. The reasoning would be that, on the one hand, they would tend to get as much food as possible, before the rest did the same, but on the other hand they would try to contain themselves so as not to be "singled out" by their conspecifics and therefore isolated from the group.

Bibliographical references:

• Acuña, L., GARCíA, D.A.G., Bruner, C.A. (2011). The effect of the presence of a number of people in different social situations. Mexican Journal of Psychology.
• Bruner, C.A. (2010). Eating behavior: common variables across conditioning and motivation. Mexican journal of behavior analysis.
• Ruddock, H.K., Brunstrom, J.M., Vartanian, L.R., Higgs, S. (2019). A systematic review and meta-analysis of the social facilitation of eating. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.