Food Choices at Restaurants Dictated by Peer Pressure, Study Suggests

When you order the same thing as your dining partners at a restaurant, you're not being indecisive, you're trying to fit in, according to a new study which found that when groups of people eat at full service restaurants together they tend to order similar foods.

University of Illinois food economist Brenna Ellison contends that if you want to make healthy food choices while dining out, be sure to have the meal with people who will be likely to order healthy foods.

"My conclusion from the research is that people want to be different, but not that different," said Ellison. "We want to fit in with the people we're dining with. It goes against the expectation that people will exhibit variety-seeking behavior; we don't want to be that different from others."

Ellison used a full service restaurant in Stillwater, Olka. as her testing ground. For three months, patrons there were seated in one of three areas. In a control area, patrons were given a menu with descriptions of the item and price. In another section of the restaurant, a test group were given menus with item, price and caloric information. A third group were given menus has all the aforementioned information plus icons of a traffic signal next to the menu choices. Low calorie items were coded to a green light, items between 401 and 800 calories were given a yellow light and anything greater than 800 calories was a red light.

Through anecdotes collected by talking to waitstaff every day when she collected dining receipts and through an analysis of the data presented by the receipts, Ellison was able to get a picture of what sort of foods people ordered.

The data was analyzed using a random utility framework, where the utility, or happiness, each individual receives from their food choice not only depends on the characteristics of the choice, but also upon the characteristic of their peers' choices.

"The big takeaway from this research is that people were happier if they were making similar choices to those sitting around them," Ellison said. "If my peers are ordering higher-calorie items or spending more money, then I am also happier, or at least less unhappy, if I order higher-calorie foods and spend more money.

"The most interesting thing we found was that no matter how someone felt about the category originally, even if it was initially a source of unhappiness, such as the items in the salad category, this unhappiness was offset when others had ordered within the same category," Ellison said. "Given this finding, we thought it would almost be better to nudge people toward healthier friends than healthier foods."

Not included in the study, but of note, Ellison said, is data of people who ordered first.

"Previous studies have shown that if you don't have to order audibly, everyone just gets what they want without any peer pressure involved," she said. "Research suggests that you should always order first because the first person is the only one who truly gets what they want."