The Daily Stat from Harvard Business Review

September 3, 2015     You May Feel Better About Eating a Cookie If It Has a Face on It In an experiment, dieters felt less conflicted about eating a cookie if it had been given two icing dots for eyes, a line of icing for a mouth, and a name; on average, they registered 3.23 on a 1-to-7 conflicted-feelings scale, versus 4.25 if they had been given a plain, nameless cookie, says a team led by doctoral student Julia D. Hur of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School. It’s not that people like foods better if they’re anthropomorphized (made to seem humanlike), it’s that they seem to feel less responsibility for having chosen to eat them, the researchers say. The reasons for this are unclear. SOURCE: When Temptations Come Alive: How Anthropomorphism Undermines Self-Control

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