Elizabeth Nath

Citation

Thesis Title
The influence of social context on food-evoked emotion

Read article at Massey Research Online:

The application of emotion measurement tools in consumer research has grown exponentially in recent years. However, despite a large body of evidence pointing to the context-dependent nature of emotion, insufficient attention has been placed on quantifying the impact of contextual variables on consumption emotion. Ms Nath investigated the effects of timing, location, and social setting on explicit emotional responses using a survey methodology, and the effect of social context on implicit emotion using facial electromyography. She found that social meals amplified positive emotion relative to solitary meals. Furthermore, her analyses revealed that facial muscle activity indicative of a disgust response was inhibited in the presence of a researcher but amplified in the presence of a co-acting stranger. Her findings confirmed the effect of social context on both explicit and implicit emotional responses to memories of food and food images.

Supervisors
Dr Peter Cannon
Dr Michael Philipp