“If I take the bottom out of this glass and I keep refilling the water or the wine, you won’t know when to stop drinking”
That's not how drinking works. That's not how anything works.
That's not how drinking works. That's not how anything works.
That's exactly how it works, to an extent. In a study [1], people with self-refilling soup bowls ate 73% more soup (p < 0.01) than those eating from normal soup bowls. Similar with popcorn [2]. I first read about this either in Nudge or in Mindless Eating.
[1] Wansink, B., Painter, J.E., & North, J. (2005). Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake Obesity Research, 13 (1), 93-100
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2005.12
[2] http://projectputthatcookiedownnow.com/2011/bottomless-bowls...
Two published replication studies (used for retractions) can be found here:
https://cisermgmt.cornell.edu/go/PHPs/catalogSingleStudy.php...
https://cisermgmt.cornell.edu/go/PHPs/catalogSingleStudy.php...
People like to rag on psychology for this, but the same replicability problem affects a lot of fields. Some of it is sloppiness (or straight-out fraud, which is more likely here) but it's also just that science is hard!
Soft sciences don't seem to have a similar culture.
Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake
Objective: Using self‐refilling soup bowls, this study examined whether visual cues related to portion size can influence intake volume without altering either estimated intake or satiation.
Research Methods and Procedures: Fifty‐four participants (BMI, 17.3 to 36.0 kg/m2; 18 to 46 years of age) were recruited to participate in a study involving soup. The experiment was a between‐subject design with two visibility levels: 1) an accurate visual cue of a food portion (normal bowl) vs. 2) a biased visual cue (self‐refilling bowl). The soup apparatus was housed in a modified restaurant‐style table in which two of four bowls slowly and imperceptibly refilled as their contents were consumed. Outcomes included intake volume, intake estimation, consumption monitoring, and satiety.
Results: Participants who were unknowingly eating from self‐refilling bowls ate more soup [14.7 ± 8.4 vs. 8.5 ± 6.1 oz; F(1,52) = 8.99; p < 0.01] than those eating from normal soup bowls. However, despite consuming 73% more, they did not believe they had consumed more, nor did they perceive themselves as more sated than those eating from normal bowls. This was unaffected by BMI.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2005.12
https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2018/feb/1...
In the past, getting as much social information as possible about your tribe was a huge reproductive advantage, but now that modern social network products have boosted the populations of our "tribes" into the thousands, trying to consume all that information has downsides that far outweigh the positive.
Facebook is basically the psychological equivalent of high fructose corn syrup.
In other words: I agree, this really isn't a great example.
(They remain legal, though.)