The Influence Of Sweet Taste Experience On College Students' Prosocial Behavior

In the long-term social life experience,"sweet" always represents good things.Lovers and family members are often call each other as sweet-related nicknames,such as "honey" and "sugar".There has been a lot of research on the relationship between sweetness preference and pro-social personality,but they get inconsistent results.Our study based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory(CMT)and Embodied Cognition Theory(ECT)explore the relationship between the sweetness and prosocial.CMT believed that the concepts of everyday life are actually constructed in a metaphorical way.Because of the long-term social life experience,people have endowed various taste with personification meanings.There are close relationship between taste experience and personality.For example,acidity is often associated with jealousy,sweetness is usually associated with prosocial behavior,bitterness is often associated with malevolent and antisocial behavior,and spiciness is often associated with anger and irritability.CMT expresses the close relation between concrete concept and abstract concept,so the specific sense of taste can be associated with abstract personification.ECT also emphasized the important role of body in the cognitive process,that the body can affect cognition.When we experience a particular flavor,our perceptions will move in the same direction as corresponding metaphors.Prosocial behavior refers to the behaviors that benefit others,prosocial behavior can not only promote the individual to adapt to the society,but also maintain the peace and development of the whole society.It has important evolutionary significance and practical significance.Therefore,we carry on research base on CMT and ECT and we use longitudinal study tracked,manipulate research laboratory situation and implicit association test research method to discuss sweet experience influence on prosocial behaviors of college students,as well as the potential mechanism.In study l,we recruited participants take part in our study and adopt longitudinal tracked research method to conduct a 14-days questionnaire survey.The research examined participants' daily sweet consumption and self-report subjective prosocial perception,prosocial personality and positive emotion.In all 14 days,we regularly distributed network questionnaires to participants everyday.If the participants did not fill out the questionnaire for more than 5 days,they were excluded from the experimental data.Finally,we got 74 valid data.The results showed that the consumption of sweet food had a significant positive effect on subjective prosocial perception.The consumption of sweet food has a significant positive influence on the prosocial personality,.The effect of sweet food consumption on positive emotion was not significant.In study 2,we adopt implicit association test to examine the implicit association between sweet taste and prosocial behavior.We recruited 35 participants(M=21.33,SD=2.146)examine the implicit connection between sweet taste foods and prosocial positive words.Two participants responded with an error rate of more than 20 percent,and the two participants were excluded from the trial data.So we finally got 33 participants.Data analysis results were found that the average response of incompatible tasks in the implicit association test was significantly higher than the average response of the compatible task.In other words,participants judge sweet food and positive words with prosocial phase coupling reaction speed is obviously faster than the sweet food and not negative words of prosocial phase coupling reaction speed,sweet foods may association with prosocial positive words implicitly.In study 3,we adopt laboratory situation manipulation method to test the influence of participants who experienced the sweet taste or not sweet taste on their prosocial behavior.We recruited 56 participants(M=19.55,SD=1.48)take part in our study.There were 20 boys and 36 girls.The experiment was designed by single factor between-subject.Participants were randomly divided into two groups(sweet taste group VS non-sweet taste group).The sweet taste group was given a sweet solution,and participants in the non-sweet group drank plain water.After drinking the solution,participants need to fill in the prosocial behavior questionnaire.The results showed that the sweet group(M=2.83,SD=1.70)put up more prosocial behavior than the non-sweet group.In our study,we draw these following conclusions through three sub-studies.1)There is a close relationship between the sweet taste food and the pro-society,and the number of people who eat sweets every day is positively correlated with the subjective social perception and prosocial personality reported by themselves.2)There is an implicit association between "sweet" and prosocial behavior.When sweet taste foods are matched with prosocial positive words,people's reactions are shorter.It suggest that people are implicitly associating sweet with prosocial behavior.In the long term life experience,"sweet" is endowed with positive prosocial meaning and supports the idea of Conceptual Metaphor Theory.3)Experience sweet taste can help people work out more prosocial behavior.Compared to people who experience the non-sweet taste,experience the sweet taste help to make more prosocial behavior.Body feeling affect the cognitive,the results support the view of Embodied Cognition Theory.