Losing the Big Picture: How Religion May Control Visual Attention

Despite the abundance of evidence that human perception is penetrated by beliefs and expectations, scientific research so far has entirely neglected the possible impact of religious background on attention. Here we show that Dutch Calvinists and atheists, brought up in the same country and culture and controlled for race, intelligence, sex, and age, differ with respect to the way they attend to and process the global and local features of complex visual stimuli: Calvinists attend less to global aspects of perceived events, which fits with the idea that people's attentional processing style reflects possible biases rewarded by their religious belief system

The possible antecedents and consequences of matching of food intake: Examining the role of trait self-esteem and interpersonal closeness

Contains fulltext : 151627.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Although there is evidence that people tend to match their intake to that of others, less is known about the motives underlying this effect. The current study, therefore, examined the relationship between self-esteem, a specific factor that has been related to the likelihood of social matching. Further, we examined the effects of food matching on interpersonal closeness among eating companions. The sample included 89 female dyads. All dyads had free access to palatable snack food during a 15 min interaction. For each dyad the matching score was calculated, as well as both individual's trait self-esteem scores and interpersonal closeness with their eating partner. The overall degree of matching within dyads was high, replicating the findings of previous research. No relationship, however, was found between trait self-esteem and the degree of matching. Furthermore, there was no effect of matching on perceived interpersonal closeness with or liking of the other person. These results suggest that self-esteem might not be a robust predictor of matching and that matching of food intake may not result in increased perceived interpersonal closeness or liking among eating partners.8 p

Modelling of food intake in Brazil and Germany: Examining the effects of self-construals

Item does not contain fulltextThe current research focused on the influence of informational eating norms on people's food intake, and examined whether this influence was moderated by participants' self-construal levels. In two experiments, a two (intake norm manipulation: low vs. high) by two (self-construal manipulation: interdependent versus independent) between-participant factorial design was used. The studies were conducted in Brazil (Experiment 1) and in Germany (Experiment 2) as participants' self-construal levels differ between these countries. In Experiment 1, results indicated that participants exposed to a high-intake norm ate more than participants exposed to a low intake norm. However, self-construal was not found to moderate the influence of food intake norms on participants' intake. In Experiment 2, replicating the results of Experiment 1, exposure to a high-intake norm increased participants' food intake, but self-construals again did not moderate modelling effects on food intake. Although differences in individuals' self-construal were found between both countries, they did not affect the magnitude of modelling effects on eating. Our studies provide evidence for cross-cultural similarity in the extent to which Brazilian and German female young adults are vulnerable to modelling effects on food intake, independent on their self-construal