Research reportHamburger hazards and emotions☆
Introduction
Eating rare hamburgers can cause an Escherichia coli (E. coli O157:H7 and other shigatoxigenic E. coli) infection, resulting in an illness ranging from mild diarrhea to severe complications that impose a significant health and economic burden on the society (Kassenborg et al., 2004). Despite numerous campaigns conducted by national food safety authorities and widespread news coverage of past E. coli outbreaks (such as the one among French children in 2005; King et al., 2009), many consumers still prefer to eat rare hamburgers (Røssvoll et al, 2013, Taylor et al, 2012). Previous studies show that consumers, especially those with high levels of education eat risky food, and that food safety information not always results in proper food handling behavior (Brennan, McCarthy, & Ritson, 2007). To develop prevention strategies, we need a better understanding of why some consumers eat potentially hazardous foods.
Up until the 1990s, most studies on consumer acceptance of food applied an analytic approach, asking consumers for their rational choice or cognitive rating, ignoring the complex dynamic processes that mediate between exposure to a food stimulus and a consumer's emotional response (Jaeger & Hedderley, 2013). Today, we know that every major problem faced by humans involves emotions (Russell, 2003, 149) and that people appraise food risks both through their feelings and through their reasoning (Leikas, Lindeman, Roininen, & Lähteenmäki, 2007). Emotions influence what we eat, food intake regulates our mood, and even trying to control our eating – dieting – affects us (Edwards et al, 2013, Evers et al, 2013, Macht, 2008). However, we do not know how different emotions influence consumption of risky food. To better understand why some people consume potentially hazardous food this study investigates how product-specific emotions influence consumption of hamburgers.
Previous studies have operationalized emotions in many different ways. Basic (or discrete) emotion theories postulate the existence of a small number of so called basic emotions characterized by emotion-specific response patterns (Ekman, 1984, Izard, 1993, Tomkins, 1984). Depending on the particular theory adopted, the number of basic emotions may vary from six (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise, happiness; e.g. Alaoui-Ismaili, Robin, Rada, Dittmar, & Vernet-Maury, 1997) to 39 as in the EsSense Profile (King & Meiselman, 2010). Desmet and Schifferstein (2008) state that not all emotional terms are relevant for all kinds of food studies. We agree with them, and decided to include two negative emotions (fear and disgust), two positive emotions (pleasure and interest) and one neutral emotion (surprise) in this study (for further discussion of the valence of these emotions, see Bänziger et al, 2012, Scherer, 2005).
The threat of harm, either physical or psychological, triggers fear and mobilizes us to cope with danger. A worry about what might happen can protect us, warn us, and make us more vigilant. One of the most prominent motivation theories in contemporary psychology, Grey's (1982) reinforcement sensitivity theory, highlights two basic, biologically based motivational systems: a) food as a pleasure to be approached and b) food as a threat to be avoided. Perception of food risk triggers the avoidance motivation system, a system sensitive to signals that indicate punishment, nonreward, and novelty. Individuals with high avoidance motivation experience fear more often and eat less risky food. Accordingly, we predict that the redness of a hamburger, an indicator of microbiological risk, increases the likelihood of experiencing fear (H1), and that fear decreases the likelihood of eating a hamburger (H2).
A culturally learned food-related emotion characterized by aversion toward eating an offensive or contaminated object (Angyal, 1941, Nabi, 1999, Rozin, 1997, Rozin, Fallon, 1987) can restrict unsafe behavior. Universal triggers of disgust, bodily products as: feces, vomit, urine, mucus, and blood, may be risky to eat and, thus, the emotion disgust may protect against consumption of unsafe food. Another explanation for disgust, that the emotion protects us against recognition of our own animality and maintains the line between humans and animals, has less to do with food safety (Haidt et al, 1994, Rozin, Fallon, 1987), and Kubberød, Ueland, Dingstad, Risvik, and Henjesand (2008) speculate if disgust of meat can be explained by associating meat with flesh. The more the meat reminds us of flesh, the more it may remind us of our own animal characteristics – red meat may even activate associations with slaughter and death (Elias, 1978, Kubberød et al, 2006, Miller, 1997). We expect aversion, triggered by dislike of meat in general and associations with animality, to evoke disgust; thus, we predict that the redness of a hamburger increases the likelihood of experiencing disgust (H3), and that disgust decreases the likelihood of eating a hamburger (H4).
While some consumers have high avoidance motivations, others have high approach motivation (Grey, 1982). The latter group experiences food and eating as more rewarding than individuals with low approach motivation. A previous study by Corr (2002) shows that high approach motivation leads to less effective processing of negative information, indicating that the pleasure of eating, arguably one of the strongest predictors of food choice (Furst, Connors, Bisogni, Sobal, & Falk, 1996), may be a distraction from food risk information. Some consumers perceive a rare hamburger to be the juiciest and tastiest, while others prefer a well-done hamburger; thus, we do not expect the redness of a hamburger to increase the average experience of pleasure. However, we do hypothesize that experiencing pleasure increases the likelihood of eating a hamburger (H5).
Since previous emotion research primarily focused on the upsetting emotions, a broad repertoire of well-defined negative emotions exists and we know more about mental disorder than mental health (Ekman, 2003). To achieve a balance between positive and negative emotions, we included the positive emotion interest in this paper. Interest, sometimes called an eccentric and curious emotion – included in few emotion classifications and sometimes even rejected as an emotion – contains typical emotional components; as a stable pattern of cognitive appraisals, facial and vocal expressions, a subjective feeling, and adaptive functions (Silvia, 2008). Interest motivates learning and exploration and attracts people to new, unfamiliar things, like new types of food. Previous studies found that interest play an important role in risk perception and that interest in a hazard correlates with perceived risk (Sjöberg, 2007). When consumers find a hazard interesting they may act upon it even though they perceive it as a threat. Risky food may, accordingly, trigger interest, and thereby increase the likelihood of eating. We predict that the redness of a hamburger increases the likelihood of experiencing interest (H6), and that interest increases the likelihood of eating a hamburger (H7).
The briefest of all emotions, lasting for only a few seconds can be both pleasant and unpleasant (Desmet, Schifferstein, 2008, Ekman, 2003). As we figure out what happens, another emotion (fear, amusement, relief, anger, disgust, and so forth) substitutes surprise. The emotion that follows the feeling of surprise depends upon what surprised us. Accordingly, we do not expect the feeling of surprise, an emotion that can be both positive and negative, to influence the likelihood of eating, but we do expect a rare hamburger to be more surprising than a well-done hamburger, and hypothesize that the redness of a hamburger increases the likelihood of experiencing surprise (H8).
Section snippets
Stimuli
Hamburgers were made from vacuum-packed ground meat and cooked to four different core temperatures of 55°C (rare), 65°C (medium rare), 73°C (medium well-done) and 80°C (well-done). Immediately after reaching the predefined core temperature, the hamburgers were sliced perpendicularly across the center of the flat surface of the patty to reveal the internal color and were arranged together with hamburger buns, salads and French fries. Pictures of each of the four different hamburgers were taken (
Results
To better understand why some people consume potentially hazardous foods, we investigated how product specific emotions influence consumption of rare and well-done hamburgers. Out of the eight proposed hypotheses, four were supported and two were partly supported. The results in Fig. 2 and Table 1 show that exposure to a rare hamburger elicits the emotions fear and disgust significantly more often than a well-done hamburger (supporting H1 and H3), while no significant differences were found for
Discussion
We found that a rare, risky hamburger that may cause an E. coli infection evokes significantly more fear and disgust than a safe, well-done hamburger, and that both hamburgers trigger pleasure and interest. Our findings suggest that a rare hamburger evokes both the avoidance and the approach motivation system. While some of the respondents, those experiencing fear and disgust (approximately 50%), seem sensitive to punishment and motivated to avoid risky food, others, those experiencing interest
Conclusion
This study contributes to the existing literature by showing that emotions influence the likelihood of eating risky food. A rare hamburger triggers fear as well as disgust, and these emotions seem to protect against consumption of risky food. The fact that a rare hamburger also triggers pleasure and interest and that these emotions increase the likelihood of consumption worries us. We need more research to be able to develop food safety strategies that take this fact into consideration; future
References (49)
- et al.
Basic emotions evoked by odorants. Comparison between autonomic responses and self-evaluation
Physiology and Behavior
(1997) - et al.
Why do consumers deviate from best microbiological food safety advice? An examination of “high-risk” consumers on the island of Ireland
Appetite
(2007) J.A. Gray's reinforcement sensitivity theory. Tests of the joint subsystems hypothesis of anxiety and impulsivity
Personality and Individual Differences
(2002)- et al.
Sources of positive and negative emotions in food experience
Appetite
(2008) - et al.
The relationship between emotions, food consumption and meal acceptability when eating out of the home
Food Quality and Preference
(2013) - et al.
Good mood food. Positive emotion as a neglected trigger for food intake
Appetite
(2013) - et al.
Food choice. A conceptual model of the process
Appetite
(1996) - et al.
Individual differences in disgust sensitivity to disgust. A scale sampling seven domains of disgust elicitors
Personality and Individual Differences
(1994) - et al.
Impact of individual differences in emotional intensity and private body consciousness on EsSense Profile® responses
Food Quality and Preference
(2013) - et al.
Development of a method to measure consumer emotions associated with food
Food Quality and Preference
(2010)
Food risk perception, gender, and individual differences in avoidance and approach motivation, intuitive and analytic thinking styles, and anxiety
Appetite
How emotions affect eating. A five-way model
Appetite
Are emotions to blame? The impact of non-analytical information processing on decision-making and implications for fostering sustainability
Ecological Economics
Predicting consumers’ intention to consume ready-to-eat meals. The role of moral attitude
Appetite
Burger preparation. What consumers say and do in the home
Journal of Food Protection
Food safety practices among Norwegian consumers
Journal of Food Protection
Consumer preferences, internal color and reduction of shigatoxigenic Escherichia coli in cooked hamburgers
Meat Science
Ground beef consumption patterns in the United States, FoodNet, 2006 through 2007
Journal of Food Protection
Why consumers behave as they do with respect to food safety and risk information
Analytica Chimica Acta
Disgust and related aversions
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology
Introducing the Geneva multimodal expression corpus for experimental research on emotion perception
Emotion (Washington, D.C.)
A power primer
Psychological Bulletin
Expression and the nature of emotion
Emotions revealed. Recognizing faces and feelings to improve communication and emotional life
Cited by (0)
- ☆
Acknowledgments: We thank Kjell J. Merok for arranging and taking the pictures of the hamburgers and the Research Council of Norwegian, the Foundation for Research Levy on Agricultural products and the Norwegian Agricultural Authority for financial support.