How social orienting affects attentional bias toward food stimuli

Many intercultural studies have investigated the attentional bias (AB) for food-stimuli and the influences of body-shape on eating behavior; however, no study has assessed whether males and females present a different AB for food-stimuli when their attention is triggered by social-stimuli. The aim of this study was to investigate, in male and female, how social-stimuli affect the orienting toward food-stimuli. Sixty-five Females (Age: 24, 51; DS: 2, 97) and forty-five Males (Age: 24, 87; DS: 3, 62) completed an Eye Gaze Cueing Task using as central cue a face (the same woman’s face changed to Under-Weight, Normal-Weight, and Obese). The targets were hypercaloric-food IAPS-images that were presented right or left respect the cue. The trials were Valid (the stimulus was presented to the same side where the woman’s gaze was directed) and Invalid (the stimulus was presented on the opposite side to the woman’s gaze direction). An ANOVA GenderxCuexValidity on mean Reaction Times (RT) revealed significant main effects and interactions; these were analyzed by a CuexValidity ANOVA on males and females separately. Results showed slower RT in Under-Weight-Face then in Normal-Weight or Obese-Face only in Invalid trials, in females (F2,128 = 5,66; p.005; pg2 = 0.08). The results showed an attentional avoidance towards food-stimuli when the face was thin, only in females. This gender difference could suggest a higher females’ sensibility to social-stimuli, and it could depend on the fact that the cue was represented by a woman’s face. These findings could be an interesting starting point to investigate the relationship between the ideal physical beauty and social attention to food-stimuli also in different cultures.