Laney at al 2008 study

•The love group believers had a greater intention to eat asparagus in a restaurant in the future.

•This same group also had a greater preference for asparagus. Additionally, they were willing to pay more for asparagus

IV: love or control group

DV: scores given on a picture show

•103 undergrads from University of Washington: 62% female and overall mean age was 19.9 yrs. 

All received course credits for participating in the study. The were assigned to either the love group (n=58) or the control group (n=45).

•Participants were told their data would be entered into a computer that would generate a profile on them.

•All completed the FHI, the FPQ and the RQ surveys (similar to Exp 1).

•To disguise true nature of experiment, participants were given 2 “filler” questionnaires to complete.

•Participants given false feedback about their responses. 

•Critical item: “You loved asparagus the first time you ate it.”

•Control grp: given no information about asparagus

•Love group: completed an elaboration exercise where they had to answer questions about their memory of this event. If they struggled to remember, they were asked to imagine what might have happened.  Also asked age, location, and what they were doing at the time of the event and how it made them feel.

•All asked to answer open-ended question.

•Looked at 20 slides of foods for 30 secs each and rated them based on four criteria:

•1. How appetizing food was in picture

•2. how disgusting food was in picture

•3. whether photo was taken by a novice, amateur, or professional

•4. artistic quality of picture.

•All then completed the FPQ, RQ, and FHI , and M/B questionnaires

•All participants were debriefed after completing questionnaires 

•Love grp: mean confidence in love of asparagus increased by 2.5

•Control grp: mean confidence increased by 1.07

•Difference is significant

•M/B questionnaire: Results went in expected direction but not signif. (those told they loved asparagus had a greater chance of generating a false memory. Critical asparagus event increased by 5.4 in love group and 3.5 in control.

•Believers/non: rating by believers for confidence increased from 1.95 in session 1 to 6.48 in session 2. Non: went from mean of 1.42 to 1.68.

•Consequences of false beliefs: Neither group’s rating changed signif. from session 1 to session 2 on RQ.

FPQ believers reported more desire to eat asparagus than control grp in session 2. 

•Participants can be given positive false food beliefs that have consequences.

•Participants who believed the false feedback were more likely to rate asparagus as more appetizing and less disgusting.