SOCIAL LEARNING

media influences both what people eat & their attitudes to certain foods. many eating behaviours are also limited by personal circumstances such as age, income & family. people learn from the media about healthy eating but must place this into broader context of their lives.

children acquire their eating behaviour by observing that of their parents. parents control the food bought & eaten in the house. studies consistently report correlations between parents & their children in terms of snack food intake & body dissatisfaction.
study explored impact of social suggestion on children's food choices. observed role models e.g. friend, mother, stranger eating food choices different from their own. greater change in child's preference if the model was the mother or friend but no change with the stranger.

suggests parental behaviour & attitudes are an essential part of the process of social learning with regard to the acquisition of eating behaviours.

more supporting studies: survey on 10-12 yr old children found significant positive correlation between peer influence & disordered eating. Likeability of peers was considered most important factor in this relationship.

study on mothers & daughters found best predictors of daughters' eating behaviours were the mothers' dietary restraint & their perceptions of the risk of their daughters becoming overweight.

both show the importance of social learning from peers & parents in attitudes to food of children though it can be seen as much more than learning alone, through evolutionary explanation of food preferences it can be seen that preference for fatty/sweet foods is a direct result of an evolved adaptation rather than learning from role models.

	Created by diana.m1629 almost 10 years ago

	Copied to Note by diana.m1629 almost 10 years ago

GCE Eating Behaviour Note on ATTITUDES TO FOOD - created from Mind Map, created by diana.m1629 on 13/05/2014.

ATTITUDES TO FOOD - created from Mind Map