Social influence effects on food valuation generalize based on conceptual similarity

Abstract

Opinions of others influence behavior and decision-making, with important consequences for health. An unaddressed question is whether and how social influence can generalize across different situations or decisions. From a learning perspective, generalization is the transfer of previously acquired information to new stimuli and can be based on both perceptual and conceptual similarity. Here, we test whether social influence generalizes to new choices based on shared conceptual features, such as the healthiness and tastiness of different food items. We conducted three studies (total N = 468), in which healthy participants rated how much they would like to eat different food items and were subsequently presented with the ratings of several other people (‘social ratings’). Unbeknownst to our participants, they were randomly assigned to social ratings that either reflected a mainly health-driven valuation of food items (‘Health group’) or to social ratings that reflected a taste-driven valuation of food items (‘Taste group’). The results in all three studies showed that participants' food ratings became more influenced by healthiness in the ‘Health group’ than in the ‘Taste group’. In one study, these effects further transferred to food choices in a naturalistic supermarket task. Our findings provide experimental evidence of generalization of social influence effects based on inferred social health norms. Futures studies could test conceptual generalization of other types of social and non-social learning and characterize the brain mechanism underlying these effects.