The more M&Ms we’re offered, the more we eat, even when no one’s watching
A researcher at the University of Pennsylvania has shown how influenced we are by something called “unit bias” or the perception of how much is considered to be “one serve”using M&Ms.
M&Ms
In the M&M experiment, the researcher, Andrew Geier offered a large mixing bowl of M&Ms at the front desk of the concierge of an apartment building. Below the bowl hung a sign that read “Eat Your Fill” with “please use the spoon to serve yourself” written underneath. He put the bowl out for 10 consecutive days and varied the size of the bowl and the size of the serving spoon
If presented with a small spoon, most passersby would take a single scoop, even though the sign encouraged them to take more. If given a much larger spoon, the subjects would still take a single scoop, even though that one scoop contained many more M&Ms. The subjects were inadvertently eating twice as much chocolate when the larger scoop happened to be in the bowl.
Got any examples of your own?
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Competetion for Portion Perfection off Kerri Ann Show
I have an overweight 9 year old who is upset by size of his tummy. Have tried to downsize meals but size sneaks back up.
i would like to win your plates because it would help me think about what to eat and how much to serve
A cup cake, or what we used to call a patty cake is now the size of a muffin!! You can no longer buy the ‘old’ patty cake sized cooking trays to cook the ‘old’ sized patty cakes. Now you have to buy the muffin tin…and so the children who are lucky enough to have home made ‘patty cakes’ now have to have a bigger serve. . and the patty size doesn’t seem to be enough…they want another one! It is also getting harder to buy the paper patty pan cases to cook them in.