According to a study that will be published later this year in the Journal of Marketing Research, people who served themselves unhealthy food were less likely to overindulge than if they were served by someone else.
Based on five experiments with nearly 800 participants, researchers found that the less involvement people had in serving themselves unhealthy snacks, like desserts or candy, the more inclined they were to eat them, and to eat larger quantities.
“If they’re served by someone else, they can outsource responsibility to someone else,” Dr. Linda Hagen, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business told The Wall Street Journal, adding “if they serve themselves, they have to accept responsibility and that makes them feel bad.”
Read more on The Wall Street Journal.
Originally published at medium.com