Believing In God Makes You Crave Potato Chips, Say Academics
Doritos, too.
Next time you slide a Pringle over your tonsils, blame God. It was your unhealthy attitude to religion that made you crave that Oreo. Your inability to think proper thoughts about a meaningless random universe, and not gluttony, is why you tossed that frozen pizza into the oven.
Our peer-reviewed paper is “God’s Presence in the Aisle: How God Salience Encourages Preference for Ultra-Processed Foods” by Ali Gohary and Hean Tat Keh in Psychology & Marketing. From their Abstract (with my paragraphifications):
God-related cues are pervasive in consumers’ daily lives, yet little research has examined how God salience shapes consumer food choices. Drawing on compensatory control theory and the literature on symbolic healing, we present findings from six studies, including a field experiment, demonstrating that high (vs. low) God salience increases consumers’ likelihood of choosing ultra-processed foods relative to unprocessed foods.
This effect is mediated by perceived healing by God, such that heightened God salience leads consumers to believe that God will heal or mitigate the potential negative health consequences of consuming ultra-processed foods.
Importantly, this effect is moderated by the perceived predictability of God’s intervention, such that the preference for ultra-processed foods emerges when God’s intervention is perceived as predictable and attenuates when it is perceived as unpredictable.
We further show that God salience increases preferences for ultra-processed foods when the foods are explicitly framed as unhealthy rather than healthy. Together, these findings advance theory on religion and consumer decision-making and offer actionable implications for policymakers, marketers, and consumers seeking to promote healthier consumption choices.
What is God salience? Glad you asked: “the activation of the concept of God in consumers’ minds”.
The activation—ding! ding! ding!—of the concept of God in the minds of all-devouring beasts. Consumers! As in, Wait, don’t go outside, there are Consumers!
The wee-P confirmed research idea is that if an all-devouring beast has his God concept activated, he will dive into the snack bowl voraciously, with complete abandon, trusting the Lord above to melt the fat away and heal his sick Frito-stuffed body which suffers from his snack-food-induced depredations.
I do not jest: “The present research introduces a novel mechanism by proposing that God salience increases perceived healing, which in turn increases consumers’ preference for ultra-processed foods.”
Yes, and this: “God-related cues evokes the belief that negative outcomes, such as the health risks associated with ultra-processed food consumption, will be mitigated through divine healing.”
I can just see Benny Hinn throwing an open bag of Cheetos at one of his consumers yelling “Heal!” And, thanks to the miracle of AI, you can see it, too, as this is in fact today’s post image.
But what happens when an all-consuming beast comes upon snack food labeled “heart healthy” or the like? “[W]hen ultra-processed foods are framed as healthy, the need for compensatory beliefs about healing is reduced, limiting the influence of God salience on consumption preferences.” Ah, yes, the great battle between God salience and Low-carb high-protein gluten-free additive-free messaging.
Before we get to the statistics I am ever warning you about, I cannot resist quoting what these peer-reviewed researchers have to say about the Almighty Himself (ellipsis theirs):
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines God as “the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped … as creator and ruler of the universe.”1 The divine attributes of God (i.e., omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and omnipresence) (Oppy 2014) help explain why the concept of God occupies a central role across cultures in shaping individual behavior.
Before that was explained through peer-review, I had no idea.
The Experiment
They coerced (convinced?) a bunch of Australian college kids to win grade points by participating several experiments, like this one.
We manipulated God salience using a reading task (Carpenter and Marshall 2009). Participants in the high God salience condition read five Bible verses (e.g., “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble,” Psalm 46:1), whereas those in the low God salience condition read five neutral sentences (e.g., “There is a bag in the room”). Participants then viewed an image of either an unprocessed food (baked potatoes) or an ultra-processed food (hash browns) and indicated their willingness to try the food using four items on 7-point scales (1?=?very unlikely/definitely not/very low likelihood/very unwilling, 7?=?very likely/definitely yes/very high likelihood/very willing; ??=?0.98; see Web Appendix S1B).
And, wouldn’t you know it, the groups did not answer identically. A wee P-value “confirmed” that the differences they saw were, in fact, differences. That’s the might of the P-values for you.
“What were those p-values, Briggs?”
I’m happy to tell you one of them was “p=0.008″, which is way below the magic number, and so the results can be declared significant.
“What’s significant mean, Briggs?”
It means the P-value was below the magic number.
Not all the Ps were wee! For instance, “willingness to try baked potatoes did not differ significantly between the low God salience… and high God salience conditions”. That only got a P of 0.37.
“Is that bad?”
It means the difference was not signficant.
“So when the P is below the magic number, it means the experimental condition caused the differences seen?”
No, that’s a forbidden deduction in wee P theory.
“Does it mean the cause is more likely?”
No, that’s forbidden to say, too.
“Well what does it mean then!?”
It means you’re allowed to say the experimental conditions, here high God salience, was linked to or associated with hash browns enjoyment. (I do not jest: hash browns is what they said.)
“And what to linked to and associated with mean?”
That that experimental condition was the cause responsible for the difference seen, or that that cause was likely.
“But you just said those were forbidden inferences. I wish you would be consistent!”
Not one single soul who uses P-values, even once, is consistent.
Meanwhile, if you want to avoid baked potatoes, boost your God salience.
Video
Here are the various ways to support this work:
"... yet little research has examined how God salience shapes consumer food choices."
One can scarcely imagine how such a richly rewarding sphere of investigation has been so greatly neglected for so long.
I once, possibly due to fever, briefly considered a career as an academic. I decided against it, thinking myself not smart enough.
Right choice, but obviously the wrong reason.