Food as a way to convey masculinities: how conformity to hegemonic masculinity norms influences men's and women's food consumption

• Autor(a) principal: Campos, Lúcia da Silva
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/12968
• topic: Gender; Masculinities; Stereotypes; Norms; Food consumption; Psicologia social; Hábito alimentar; Género; Masculinidade; Estereótipo; Norma social

Unhealthy eating habits have a great impact on people’s health. Literature shows that there are sex-related differences in their adoption; however, sex is not the only explaining factor, with gender playing a vital role in this relation. Drawing upon the Gender in Context Model (Deaux & Major, 1987) and the Focus Theory of Normative Conduct (Cialdini, Reno, & Kallgren, 1990; Cialdini, Kallgren, & Reno, 199), we aimed to investigate how conformity to gender norms, particularly hegemonic masculinity norms, influenced men’s and women’s meat, vegetables and fruit consumption, and how gender-salient contexts moderated this relation. We also aimed to test if sex-related differences in these foods’ consumption were mediated by the conformity to hegemonic masculinity norms. In a quasi-experimental between-subjects design, 519 participants completed the Portuguese version of the Conformity to Masculinity Norms Inventory, and answered questions about their past week’s meat, fruit and vegetable consumption; additionally, half of the participants received a message designed to manipulate gender salience while the other half did not. Our hypotheses were partially confirmed; the relationship between the conformity to masculinity norms and food consumption was moderated by gender salience, and sex-related differences in food consumption were partially mediated by the conformity to masculinity norms. Therefore, this study showed that gender is an explaining factor of food consumption patterns of men and women, both through conformity to gender norms, and through contexts were gender is salient.