14 DAY TRIAL // Fast food is taking the rap for countless evils, no matter how hard fast food chains are trying to counter the attacks by releasing “healthy” options as well. A recent study cited by Times Online adds another evil to the very long list: that of making us impatient, by promoting a culture of instant gratification, even when we’re not in a hurry.
The very thing that made fast food popular (namely that it’s precisely what its name says it is, food that you can order and eat fast) is now being used to show that it has a rather odd effect on people. Though without as much as being aware of it, the mere sight of a logo of one of the biggest junk food chain restaurants makes us jittery and impatient, even at those times when he have no reason to be in a hurry.
These were the conclusions of a study to be published in the journal Psychological Science, conducted by Chen-Bo Zhong, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Toronto University in Canada. The study included 57 volunteers, who were monitored to establish whether even a slight connection to fast food had any effect on them. Apparently, it does, as only glimpsing a fast food logo (which they could not make out) made them read faster and act in an overall more impatient manner.
“Participants in experiments became jittery even when shown the logo of the McDonald’s burger chain on screen for such a short instant that they could not recognize it. Although each individual sighting of a logo has only a short-term subliminal effect, researchers fear that walking daily past numerous burger bars and sandwich shops could have a cumulative ‘behavioral priming’ effect, making people hurry whether or not they are pushed for time,” Times Online writes.
Chen-Bo Zhong explains that by the effects the fast food culture has on us. “Fast food represents a culture of time efficiency and instant gratification. The problem is that the goal of saving time gets activated upon exposure to fast food regardless of whether time is a relevant factor in the context. We’re finding that the mere exposure to fast food is promoting a general sense of haste and impatience regardless of the context,” he says. The problem is we’re not even aware of it.