Nature's beauty versus urban bustle: Chinese folk music influences food choices by inducing mental imagery of different scenes.

Previous research has demonstrated that music can impact people's food choices by triggering emotional states. We reported two virtual reality (VR) experiments designed to examine how Chinese folk music influences people's food choices by inducing mental imagery of different scenes. In both experiments, young healthy Chinese participants were asked to select three dishes from an assortment of two meat and two vegetable dishes while listening to Chinese folk music that could elicit mental imagery of nature or urban scenes. The results of Experiment 1 revealed that they chose vegetable-forward meals more frequently while listening to Chinese folk music eliciting mental imagery of nature versus urban scenes. In Experiment 2, the participants were randomly divided into three groups, in which the prevalence of their mental imagery was enhanced, moderately suppressed, or strongly suppressed by performing different tasks while listening to the music pieces. We replicated the results of Experiment 1 when the participants' mental imagery was enhanced, whereas no such effect was observed when the participants' mental imagery was moderately or strongly suppressed. Collectively, these findings suggest that music may influence the food choices people make in virtual food choice tasks by inducing mental imagery, which provides insights into utilizing environmental cues to promote healthier food choices.

Influence of eating together on brain activation and hedonic evaluation in response to foods.

Previous research has documented the influence of eating together on people's food expectations and choices. We conducted an fMRI study to investigate the influence of the label "eating together" on behavioral and brain responses to healthy or unhealthy foods. The participants (N = 28, 13 females; mean age = 21.19) viewed food photos presented with a label of "eating together" or "eating alone" and estimated the palatability, pleasantness, and desirability of each food. The label "eating together" elicited more positive ratings for both healthy and unhealthy foods than the label "eating alone," and this effect of social context was larger for unhealthy than healthy foods. The label "eating together" also elicited greater activation in the left insula and the right posterior insula for unhealthy foods (p = 0.001 and p = 0.004, whole-brain corrected, respectively). These findings suggest that a label of "eating together" can enhance the reward values of foods, with a potentially greater enhancement for unhealthy foods.

A cross-cultural study of beliefs about the influence of food sharing on interpersonal relationships and food choices.

We conducted two studies on participants from China and the USA to investigate their beliefs about food sharing. In Study 1, the participants were asked to rate the influence of different types of sharing on the interpersonal relationships between two individuals. Compared to sharing non-food material, both groups expected sharing food to exert a more positive influence on the intimacy and mutual trust between the sharer and the recipient. In Study 2A, the participants were asked to rate to which extent it is appropriate to share a certain food with another person. The results revealed that the solid or liquid state and the type of foods influenced both groups of participants' beliefs about whether a food is appropriate for sharing. In Study 2B, the participants were asked to rate the likelihood of ordering certain foods when they were eating alone, eating together, or sharing food with another person in a restaurant scenario. When sharing food with other people, both groups of participants were less likely to order foods that were inappropriate for sharing and more likely to order foods that were appropriate for sharing, thus suggesting the influence of beliefs about food sharing on food choices. Despite some cross-cultural differences in both studies, the results revealed some cross-cultural shared beliefs about food sharing. These findings suggest that people's beliefs regarding the positive influence of food sharing on interpersonal relationships influence food choices and may help explain why foods are shared while eating with others even there is no social obligation to do so.

An event-related potential study of consumers' responses to food bundles.

We conducted two event-related potentials (ERP) experiments to investigate consumers' responses to different types of food bundles. In Experiment 1, the participants were instructed to indicate their wanting of a three-yogurt bundle when their neural activity was recorded. The results of self-report wanting scores revealed that the participants wanted bundles consisting of their favorite yogurt products more than those of disliked products. Such a difference in self-report scores was also indexed by the N2 in frontal brain and the P1 in the left hemisphere. By contrast, bundles consisting of three different yogurt products elicited a smaller amplitude of the N2 than bundles consisting of two favorite products and one disliked product, but these two types of bundles received comparable wanting scores. Moreover, we asked the participants in Experiment 2 to perform a visual discrimination task on these bundles, and did not found these effects on the N2 or the P1. Collectively, these results revealed neural activities underlying consumers' responses to food rewards, and demonstrated the role of individuals' variety-seeking tendency in wanting process.

Assessing the benefits of multisensory audiotactile stimulation for overweight individuals.

We report an experiment designed to examine whether individuals who are overweight would perform differently when trying to detect and/or discriminate auditory, vibrotactile, and audiotactile targets. The vibrotactile stimuli were delivered either to the participant's abdomen or to his hand. Thirty-six young male participants were classified into normal, underweight, or overweight groups based on their body mass index. All three groups exhibited a significant benefit of multisensory (over the best of the unisensory) stimulation, but the magnitude of this benefit was modulated by the weight of the participant, the task, and the location from which the vibrotactile stimuli happened to be presented. For the detection task, the overweight group exhibited a significantly smaller benefit than the underweight group. In the discrimination task, the overweight group showed significantly more benefits than the other two groups when the vibrotactile stimuli were delivered to their hands, but not when the stimuli were delivered to their abdomens. These results might raise some interesting questions regarding the mechanisms underlying audiotactile information processing and have applied relevance for the design of the most effective warning signal (e.g., for drivers).

Influence of a robotic companion on women's food choices: Evidence from an imaginary task.

Previous research has demonstrated the influence of commensal dining between humans on food choices, whereas we conducted two studies to examine how the presence of a robot might influence people's choices between meat-heavy and vegetable-forward meals in imaginary scenarios. In Study 1, participants were instructed to choose three desirable dishes from a set of two meat and two vegetable dishes while they imagined eating alone, with a human, or with a robot. Although the meat dishes were rated as more palatable and pleasant, the female participants chose fewer meat-heavy meals when eating alone or with a robot than when eating with a human, whereas no such effect was observed for the male participants. We also replicated these patterns in Study 2, as the female participants chose fewer meat-heavy meals when eating with a robot and a human than when eating with two humans. Collectively, these findings provide empirical evidence regarding how the presence of a certain robot can influence female consumers' food choices in imaginary scenarios, which has direct implications for the practice of promoting sustainable food choices.

Influence of flavor information on visual search: Attentional capture by and suppression of flavor-associated colors.

Numerous studies have demonstrated the impact of flavor cues on visual search, yet the underlying mechanisms remain elusive. In this experiment, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine whether, and if so, how flavor information could lead to attentional capture by, and suppression of, flavor-associated colors. The participants were asked to taste certain flavored beverages and subsequently complete a shape-based visual search task, while their neural activities were simultaneously recorded. The behavioral results revealed that the participants made slower responses when a distractor in the flavor-associated color (DFAC) was present, suggesting an attentional bias toward the flavor-associated color. The ERP results revealed that the N2pc was detected if the target and the DFAC were shown in the same visual field (e.g. both target and DFCA on the right side of the screen), when the pairings between flavor cues and target colors were incongruent. However, the N2pc was not observed if the target and the DFAC were shown in the opposite visual fields (e.g. target on the right and DFCA on the left side of the screen) for the incongruent color-flavor pairings. Moreover, the distractor positivity (Pd) was observed if the target and the DFAC were shown in the opposite visual field for the congruent color-flavor pairings. These results suggest that both attentional capture and suppression are involved in the influence of flavor information on visual search. Collectively, these findings provide initial electrophysiological evidence on the mechanisms of the crossmodal influence of flavor cues on visual search.

Elimination of sex difference in direction giving.

Past studies have shown that men provide more cardinal information and mileage estimates than women when describing routes learned from maps. In the current study, we examined whether this sex difference would persist if more legends were added to the maps. The participants looked at maps for 3 min and then wrote down directions from memory. Their usage of cardinal directions, mileage estimates, landmarks, and left-right directions was coded and analyzed. The results showed that men and women used cardinal directions equally for the 4-legend maps, whereas men used more cardinal directions than women for 1-legend maps as shown previously. Our results suggested that subtly drawing attention to cardinal directions successfully eliminated the sex difference in usage, although a different pattern was seen for mileage estimates. The underlying mechanisms are discussed.

Alone but together: Cloud-based commensality benefits physical and mental health.

Cloud-based commensality refers to an eating scenario in which people are eating and videoconferencing with remote co-diners. We report two experiments designed to investigate whether cloud-based commensality can exert a positive effect on individuals' physical and mental health. In Experiment 1, the participants were asked to rate their expectations concerning their feelings when eating in the context of cloud-based commensality or solitary eating and to make food choices in each eating scenario. In Experiment 2, romantic couples were recruited to have meals in different eating scenarios in the laboratory and were asked to rate their emotions and close relationships. The results of the two experiments revealed that when engaging in cloud-based commensality, participants reduced their intake of meat dishes but did not increase their choices of meat dishes compared to solitary eating. Moreover, the results suggest that cloud-based commensality can alleviate negative feelings and promote positive emotions during periods of quarantine or non-quarantine and enhance close relationships for romantic couples. These findings demonstrate that cloud-based commensality is beneficial for individuals' physical and mental health and provide practical implications for utilizing social eating to promote healthy eating.

A virtual reality-based study of color contrast to encourage more sustainable food choices.

In order to identify effective strategies to increase more environmentally friendly food choices, we conducted an experimental study to examine how the color contrast between the food and the background might influence people's choices between meat and vegetable dishes. Participants were instructed to choose three desirable dishes out of a choice set presented on a red- or green-colored table in a simulated restaurant environment. Each choice set consisted of two meat and two vegetable dishes, so the participants had to choose between the meat-heavy and vegetable-forward meals. The participants chose the meat-heavy meals more often than the chance level. However, the results revealed that using a red table to present the choice set could shift them toward choosing fewer meat-heavy meals and thus more vegetable-forward meals, and the visual attractiveness of the meat dishes was decreased when presented on the red tables. These findings provide empirical evidence regarding how the contrast between the color of food and the background color of the dining table can be used to modulate the sensory appeal of foods in order to promote sustainable food choices.

Cloud-Based Commensality: Enjoy the Company of Co-diners Without Social Facilitation of Eating.

Previous research has associated frequently enforced solo dining with negative consequences on psychological well-being, but the problem of having to eat alone may be solved by seeking mealtime companions in the digital space by watching an eating broadcast (i.e., Mukbang) or videoconferencing with others (i.e., cloud-based commensality). We conducted the present study to compare the consequences of Mukbang-based, cloud-based, and in-person commensality. Ninety-five healthy Chinese young adults were instructed to rate images of eating scenarios and foods. The results revealed that they expected loneliness to be reduced by Mukbang-based or in-person commensality, but they were also aware of the risks of enhancing food intake and/or being shifted toward less healthy food choices in these two scenarios. By contrast, the participants expected cloud-based commensality to provide the benefits of reducing loneliness without the health-compromising risks of increasing food intake or unhealthy eating. Collectively, these findings suggest the beliefs of the participants that cloud-based commensality can provide an "alone but together" context to balance the need for social interactions with the strategic avoidance of a social context facilitating unhealthy eating. The findings also provide some novel insights into how the application of technologies for eating behavior can be used to integrate social factors and food pleasure, and shed light on the promising future of cloud-based commensality as a combination of the strengths of solitary and commensal eating.

The effect of active selection in human path integration.

Path integration refers to the ability to integrate self-motion information to estimate one's current position and orientation relative to the origin. To investigate the effect of active selection in path integration, we used a virtual homing task in which participants traveled along hallways and attempted to directly return to the origin. Two groups of participants differed in the voluntary selection of the path structure, but received the same perceptual and motor information. Information about distance traveled was purely visual via optic flow, whereas turnings were specified both visually and through body senses. The active group made free (Experiment 1) or forced (Experiment 2) selections to determine the structure of the outbound path, whereas the passive group followed these outbound paths. We found no facilitation effects of the active selection on homing performance, suggesting that humans' limited path integration abilities cannot be attributed to the nature of the task.

Food Sharing With Choice: Influence on Social Evaluation.

We conducted two studies to investigate the influence of food sharing on people's social evaluation. In Study 1, the results of an online survey revealed that Chinese adults expected voluntary food sharing to influence the recipient's social evaluation of the sharer. In Study 2, we ran a laboratory-based experiment in which each participant broke bread with one of two unacquainted individuals. When the participants could choose whom to share food with, they rated the selected person as being more prosocial than the person they did not choose. These results demonstrate the influence of voluntary food sharing with choice on people's social evaluation of unacquainted individuals, and shed some light on the influence of eating behavior on social perception.

Grey matter volume and amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations predicts consumer ethnocentrism tendency.

Consumer ethnocentrism tendency (CET) refers to consumers' belief about the appropriateness and morality of buying foreign products, and this concept characterizes consumers' tendency to differentiate in-group and out-group commercial products and to avoid imported products for nationalistic reasons. In order to identify the neural correlates of individual differences in CET, we conducted a combined voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and resting-state fMRI study with 228 healthy adults from mainland China, and examined the associations between self-reported CET scores and gray matter volume (GMV), as well as fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF). The VBM and fALFF results consistently associated consumer ethnocentrism with the middle temporal gyrus, and the fALFF results further revealed the roles of the anterior cingulate gyrus and anterior insula in CET. Collectively, these findings provide converging evidence about the neural correlates for dispositional attitudes toward domestic and foreign products.

Gender Differences in the Associations Between Gray Matter Volume and the Centrality of Visual Product Aesthetics.

Visual aesthetics influence consumers' perception, acquisition, and usage of products, but the level of significance that a commercial product's visual aesthetics hold for each consumer varies from one person to another. Such individual difference is referred to as the centrality of visual product aesthetics (CVPA). Previous research has revealed that female adults scored higher than male adults in the self-reported CVPA scale. In order to identify the neuroanatomical correlates of this gender difference, we conducted a voxel-based morphometry (VBM) study to examine the association between the CVPA and gray matter volume (GMV) in a large sample of healthy adults from mainland China. The results revealed positive correlations between the female participants' CVPA scores and the GMV in two brain areas liked to reward processing, namely the left medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) and the left dorsal striatum. By contrast, the results revealed a negative correlation between the male participants' CVPA scores and their GMV in the left mOFC. Collectively, these findings suggest that the level of significance that a commercial product's visual aesthetics hold for consumers may be associated with the rewards that they are able to receive from them. These findings also provide empirical evidence about the neuroanatomical correlates of self-reported values.

Influence of route decision-making and experience on human path integration.

Path integration refers to a process of integrating information regarding self-motion to estimate one's current position and orientation. Here we reported two experiments designed to investigate whether, and if so, how human path integration could be influenced by route decision-making and previous experience. Using head-mounted display virtual reality and hallway mazes, we asked participants to travel along several hallways and then to directly return to the starting point, namely a path completion task. We created an active condition in which the participants had the opportunity to voluntarily select the structure of outbound paths, and a passive condition in which they followed the outbound paths chosen by others. Each participant was required to take part in the study on two consecutive days, and they performed the task under different (in Experiment 1) or the same conditions (in Experiment 2) on these two days. The results of both experiments revealed a facilitation effect of route decision-making on the participants' performance on the first day. The results also revealed that both their performance and path selection strategies on the second day were subject to their experience obtained from the first day. Collectively, these findings suggest that human path integration may be improved by having the opportunity to make decisions on the structure of outbound paths and/or more experience with the task.

Functional and structural basis of the color-flavor incongruency effect in visual search.

We conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study and a voxel-based morphometry (VBM) study to investigate the functional and structural basis of how visual search for flavor labels in packaging is influenced by the color of the packaging. The participants were cued by a flavor word before searching for a package with this flavor label. The behavioral results of both studies revealed that the participants were slower to find the target when its color was incongruent with the flavor label in terms of color-flavor associations than when it was congruent with the flavor label, which is indicative of a color-flavor incongruency effect in the reaction times. The fMRI results revealed that this behavioral effect was associated with enhanced activation in the right putamen. The VBM results further revealed a significant positive correlation between the magnitude of the behavioral effect and volume of gray matter in the right putamen. Taken together, these findings suggest that the color-flavor incongruency effect may be attributed to the violation of color expectation in the incongruent condition and that the putamen may be one of the important areas for processing events in violation of expectation.

Differential inter-trial effects in the visual search of children, adolescents, and young adults.

We examined the age-related variation in one type of inter-trial effect of visual search, the distractor previewing effect (DPE), in affectively neutral and affectively charged contexts. In Experiment 1, children, adolescents, and young adults were faster to identify the shape of a color target when the color of the current distractors had already been previewed than when the target had been previewed in the preceding target-absent trial, indicative of a color-based DPE. The results revealed a greater DPE in children than in adolescents and young adults, but it can be attributed to children's slower RTs than the other two groups. In Experiment 2, children, adolescents, and young adults were instructed to respond to a schematic face that was different from the other two faces. Young adults were faster in searching for a threatening face among friendly ones when they had previewed a target-absent display consisting of friendly faces than that of threatening faces, indicating an emotional DPE. By contrast, children showed a reversed DPE under the same condition, whereas adolescents showed no DPE. Taken together, these results suggested that the three age groups were all able to create an inhibitory attentional bias on the basis of trial history in affectively neutral context, whereas children and adolescents were not able to create such an inhibitory attentional bias in affectively charged contexts in the same way as adults did. These findings implied that the development of attentional inhibition abilities in affectively charged contexts might be delayed compared to those in affectively neutral contexts.

Visual Search for Wines with a Triangle on the Label in a Virtual Store.

Two experiments were conducted in a virtual reality (VR) environment in order to investigate participants' in-store visual search for bottles of wines displaying a prominent triangular shape on their label. The experimental task involved virtually moving along a wine aisle in a virtual supermarket while searching for the wine bottle on the shelf that had a different triangle on its label from the other bottles. The results of Experiment 1 revealed that the participants identified the bottle with a downward-pointing triangle on its label more rapidly than when looking for an upward-pointing triangle on the label instead. This finding replicates the downward-pointing triangle superiority (DPTS) effect, though the magnitude of this effect was more pronounced in the first as compared to the second half of the experiment, suggesting a modulating role of practice. The results of Experiment 2 revealed that the DPTS effect was also modulated by the location of the target on the shelf. Interestingly, however, the results of a follow-up survey demonstrate that the orientation of the triangle did not influence the participants' evaluation of the wine bottles. Taken together, these findings reveal how in-store the attention of consumers might be influenced by the design elements in product packaging. These results therefore suggest that shopping in a virtual supermarket might offer a practical means of assessing the shelf standout of product packaging, which has important implications for food marketing.