Modelling of food intake in Brazil and Germany: Examining the effects of self-construals

• This study examined if self-construals moderated social modelling of food intake in two countries (Brazil and Germany).
• Young females followed through a remote confederate manipulation, both in Brazil and in Germany.
• Participant's primed or dispositional self-construals did not affect participant's tendency to follow the intake norm, suggesting that self-construals do not moderate social modeling of food intake.
• Our results suggest cross cultural similarity of social modeling between Brazilians and Germans.

The current research focused on the influence of informational eating norms on people's food intake, and examined whether this influence was moderated by participants' self-construal levels. In two experiments, a two (intake norm manipulation: low vs. high) by two (self-construal manipulation: interdependent versus independent) between-participant factorial design was used. The studies were conducted in Brazil (Experiment 1) and in Germany (Experiment 2) as participants' self-construal levels differ between these countries. In Experiment 1, results indicated that participants exposed to a high-intake norm ate more than participants exposed to a low-intake norm. However, self-construal was not found to moderate the influence of food intake norms on participants' intake. In Experiment 2, replicating the results of Experiment 1, exposure to a high-intake norm increased participants' food intake, but self-construals again did not moderate modelling effects on food intake. Although differences in individuals' self-construal were found between both countries, they did not affect the magnitude of modelling effects on eating. Our studies provide evidence for cross-cultural similarity in the extent to which Brazilian and German female young adults are vulnerable to modelling effects on food intake, independent on their self-construal.