Unwashed pots and pans tower
precariously in the sink. Last week’s mail a strewn across the countertop, and
a TV blares from the next room over. According to a study published in February
in Environment and Behavior, this
kind of chaotic environment can be enough to make someone overeat, given a
certain mindset.
“We knew
environment factors influence behavior, and we knew the influence of stress on
overeating in general,” points outs Lenny Vartanian, a psychologist at the
University of New South Wales in Australia and the study’s lead author. “But nobody
had connected those to say: here’s an experience that lots of people actually
encounter. What impact does (a disordered kitchen) have?”
To answer
this question, the researchers set up two kitchens: one was cluttered and
noisy, the other tidy and quiet. They then instructed 98 female undergraduates
to complete a writing assignment while in one of the kitchens. Some of the
volunteers wrote about time they felt practically out of control; wrote about
the time they felt in control. They were the provided with cookies, crackers,
and carrots and told they could eat as much as they wanted.
Among the
participants who wrote about a time they felt out of control, those in the
chaotic kitchen consumed twice as many calories from cookies as did those in
the organized kitchen. Subjects in the messy kitchen who had though about being
in control, however, at less than people in other groups. “The in-control mindset
buffered against the negative impact of the environment,” Vartanian says. He
and his team hope to eventually find ways to induce that powerful feeling of
control in people in the real world, where kids, busy schedules and the messy
business of life can make it tough to keep the kitchen tidy.
-Jordana Cepelewicz
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