(Press-News.org) Restaurants and dinner hosts could improve dining experiences and reduce social awkwardness by serving guests at the same time, a new study has found.
We have all faced that situation in a restaurant or at a dinner party: our food has arrived but we find ourselves waiting for others at the table to be served before starting. This long-established norm is the subject of new research co-authored by Bayes Business School, that shows we are more concerned about violating this practice ourselves than we are about others doing so.
WATCH: Authors of the study explain its outcomes
The research by Irene Scopelliti, Professor of Marketing and Behavioural Science, and Janina Steinmetz, Professor of Marketing at Bayes, along with Dr Anna Paley from the Tilburg School of Economics and Management, examined how participants viewed their own compliance of the norm versus their expectations of dining companions across six experiments.
Participants imagined dining with a friend and either receiving food first or watching their co-diner receive theirs. Those ‘receiving’ food first were asked to what extent they should wait or eat on a numerical scale, while those waiting for food were asked what they thought their dining partner should do.
Results displayed a ‘self-other’ difference, in that those receiving food first believed they should wait to a far greater extent than their dining partners expected them to.
Further experiments explored why this happens. Participants were asked how they would feel about their co-diner eating or waiting, and how they would expect their companion to feel about them. Results showed that people expected to feel better about waiting themselves – and worse about starting to eat – if their food arrived first, than they predicted others would feel in the same situation.
The study also tested whether interventions might influence behaviour – such as encouraging participants to consider their co-diner’s perspective or telling them that their dining partner had explicitly invited them to start eating.
The research suggest this is why people would still encourage co-diners to break the norm, and that restaurants should avoid putting diners in this situation where possible.
Professor Steinmetz said:
“The decision of when to start eating food in the company of others is a very common dilemma.
“Norm adherence dictates that we wait until all food is served before starting, and disregarding it feels rude and discourteous to us. Surprisingly, this feeling barely changes even when another person explicitly asks us to go ahead. It occurs because people have greater access to their own internal feelings – such as appearing considerate or avoiding social discomfort – than to others' psychological experiences.
“In these situations, we should be aware that we’re only waiting for our own benefit, and co-diners probably mind far less than we think if we wanted to go ahead and eat.
“People will wait to feel polite, but if the quality of their food is dependent on factors like temperature it may not taste as nice when they finally do start eating.”
Professor Scopelliti added:
“This is not just about politeness: it's about psychological access.
“We can feel our own internal discomfort, guilt, and the positive feelings from appearing considerate, but we can't fully access what others are experiencing internally. So, while we might feel genuinely awful about eating before others get their food, we assume others won't feel as strongly about it.
“Results of our study have implications for restaurants and beyond. Any service where people receive food at different times within a group creates similar psychological dynamics. Providers often optimise for efficiency, without realising that some people experience genuine discomfort when they receive service before others in their group.
“The research shows how much we systematically underestimate others' internal emotional experiences, which contributes to broader understanding of social norms and group dynamics.”
‘Wait or Eat? Self-other differences in a commonly held food norm’, by Dr Anna Paley, Professor Irene Scopelliti and Professor Janina Steinmetz is published in Appetite.
ENDS
Notes to Editors
The full sample size of this study is 1,907 participants
In a preregistered survey of 625 individuals from 91 countries, 91 per cent of respondents reported that in their country of origin it is expected that the person with the food delays consumption until everyone is served. END
Despite decades of ocean exploration, humans still lack basic answers to one of the most fundamental ecological questions: where is marine life found, and why?
A new study published in Communications Earth & Environment, highlights just how uneven our knowledge of ocean biodiversity really is.
By systematically processing nearly 19 million records from the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS), the study reveals that global marine biodiversity data from below 30m are heavily biased towards shallow waters (50% of benthic records come from just the shallowest 1% of the ...
Penn-led researchers have turned a deadly fungus into a potent cancer-fighting compound. After isolating a new class of molecules from Aspergillus flavus, a toxic crop fungus linked to deaths in the excavations of ancient tombs, the researchers modified the chemicals and tested them against leukemia cells. The result? A promising cancer-killing compound that rivals FDA-approved drugs and opens up new frontiers in the discovery of more fungal medicines.
“Fungi gave us penicillin,” says Sherry Gao, ...
As artificial intelligence reshapes workplaces worldwide, a new study provides early evidence suggesting AI exposure has not, thus far, caused widespread harm to workers' mental health or job satisfaction. In fact, the data reveals that AI may even be linked to modest improvements in worker physical health, particularly among employees with less than a college degree.
But the authors caution: It is way too soon to draw definitive conclusions.
The paper, “Artificial Intelligence and the Wellbeing of Workers,” published June 23 in Nature: Scientific Reports, uses two decades of longitudinal data from the ...
The use of this test in clinical practice would allow for the avoidance of side effects and the implementation of more effective treatment.
"We've found a way to practice precision medicine with standard chemotherapy," says Geoff Macintyre, a researcher at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO).
The research has been published in the journal Nature Genetics
The test will now be validated in a hospital setting, thanks to a new project funded by the Spanish Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Service.
Chemotherapy seeks to destroy tumor cells and has been a standard treatment ...
Cancer Research UK-funded scientists at the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) and Cambridge-based startup Tailor Bio, have created a test which can successfully predict whether cancer will resist common forms of chemotherapy treatment.
It works by looking at changes to the order, structure and number of copies of DNA within the cancer - known as chromosomal instability (CIN) signatures. These signatures are found by reading the full DNA sequence of the tumour and looking for patterns in how the chromosomes are disrupted when compared to normal cells
The ...
Years after wildfires burn forests and watersheds, the contaminants left behind continue to poison rivers and streams across the Western U.S. — much longer than scientists estimated.
A new study, published today in Nature Communications Earth & Environment, analyzed water quality in more than 500 watersheds across the Western U.S., and is the first large-scale assessment of post-wildfire quality.
The research was led by scientists from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science ...
The chemical reaction to produce hydrogen from water is several times more effective when using a combination of new materials in three layers, according to researchers at Linköping University in Sweden. Hydrogen produced from water is a promising renewable energy source – especially if the hydrogen is produced using sunlight.
The production of new petrol and diesel cars will be banned in the EU as of 2035. Electric motors are expected to become increasingly common in vehicles – but they are not suitable for all types of transport.
“Passenger cars can have a battery, but heavy trucks, ships or aircraft cannot use ...
Researchers have discovered that the most aggressive melanomas, the deadliest form of skin cancer, overactivate two key processes in mitochondria, the components of cells that provide energy. Blocking these pathways with currently available drugs effectively killed melanoma cells. The findings are published by Wiley online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.
By mapping the proteins expressed in 151 tumor and normal skin samples, investigators found that the most aggressive melanomas hyper-activate the ...
A single pellet of recycled plastic can contain over 80 different chemicals. A new study with researchers from University of Gothenburg and Leipzig shows that recycled polyethylene plastic can leach chemicals into water causing impacts in the hormone systems and lipid metabolism of zebrafish larvae.
The plastic pollution crisis has reached global levels, threatening both planetary and human health, and recycling is proposed as one of the solutions to the plastics pollution crisis. However, as plastics contain thousands of chemical additives and other substances that can be toxic, and these are almost ...
Giving birth to a child after 40 is becoming more and more common – but it can entail an increased risk to the child. A new study based on data from over 300,000 births in Sweden shows that children of older mothers are more often born prematurely or with complications, especially when the mother is 45 years of age or older.
In large parts of the world, women are having children later and later in life. In Sweden, 4.8% of mothers were 40 years of age or older in 2022. Previous research has shown that older mothers differ from younger mothers in several respects such as having a higher BMI, a higher proportion having utilised assisted ...
