The taste of fruit salad was unaffected by the presence of a mirror.
Putting up a mirror in the kitchen could help you eat less unhealthy food, new research finds.
In the study, people who ate chocolate cake felt it was less tasty when there was a mirror in the room.
Fruit salad, though, was unaffected by the presence of a mirror.
Dr Ata Jami, the study’s author, said:
“A glance in the mirror tells people more than just about their physical appearance.
It enables them to view themselves objectively and helps them to judge themselves and their behaviors in a same way that they judge others.”
Dr Jami explains how the mirror works in the paper:
“…consuming unhealthy food in front of a mirror enhances the self-awareness of current behavior.
This leads to discomfort when one realizes that such behavior does not match with one’s ideal standards of 4 living.
Since objective attribution of discomfort to self enhances the discomfort, people utilize a biased attribution process and negatively distort their taste perception to explain the discomfort.”
The study was published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research (Jami, 2016).
Kitchen image from Shutterstock
