Disappointed sports fans increase consumption of saturated fat and sugar
On the day following a big football game, fans of the losing team consume 16%more saturated fats and 10% more calories, whereas supporters of the winning team ate 9% less sat fat and 5% fewer calories, according to new research conducted by INSEAD marketing professor Pierre Chandon and INSEAD doctoral student Yann Cornil, the lead author of the study. The findings are published in the August edition of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
“People eat better when their football team wins and worse when it loses, especially if they lost unexpectedly, by a narrow margin, or against a team of equal strength,” notes Pierre Chandon, the L’Oréal Chaired Professor of Marketing whose award-winning research includes studying the relationship between marketing and consumer food choices.
The researchers hypothesized that, when a favorite team loses, people feel an identity threat and are more likely to use eating as a “coping” mechanism. Winning, on the other hand, seems to provide a psychological boost that enhances one’s self control. “Although prior studies had shown that sport outcomes influence reckless driving, heart attacks, and even domestic violence, no one had examined how they influence eating,” says Yann Cornil.
These results were obtained by comparing the outcomes from two seasons’ worth of the National Football League (NFL) with people’s food consumption in over two dozen US cities. “The data allowed us to look at people living in cities without an NFL team or with a team that didn't play on that particular day, providing us with two control samples,” explained Cornil, a PhD student at INSEAD.
To test whether these effects hold outside the US, the INSEAD team asked a group of French people to write about a time when their favorite team lost or won. In a later, seemingly unrelated task, the people who wrote about their team losing opted to eat chips and candy over healthier grapes and tomatoes. The group who wrote about winning, on the other hand, preferred the healthier options.
What do these findings mean for all those fervent fans who support underdogs? “Even if you are rooting for a perennial loser, there is a solution if you are concerned about healthy eating: After a defeat, write down what is really important to you in life,” Cornil and Chandon suggest. “In our studies, this simple technique, called ‘self affirmation,’ completely eliminated the effects of defeats.”
The researchers are continuing to investigate factors that influence people’s eating behavior even if they’re not aware of them, particularly those factors that are under the control of food marketers, like package design and food claims. This has been an area of special interest to INSEAD Professor Pierre Chandon, who is also Academic Director of the INSEAD Social Science Research Centre, the school’s behaviour research hub in Paris. Chandon’s previous publications on the subject earned him the 2012 William F. O’Dell Award, the prestigeous honour bestowed annually by the American Marketing Association for research that has made the most significant, long-term contribution to marketing theory and practise.
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