Association of Parental Guilt With Harmful Versus Healthful Eating and Feeding From a Virtual Reality Buffet

Abstract

Objective: Parents often report guilt about what they feed their child, but no studies have examined how this guilt might affect their child-feeding or own eating behavior. Some studies suggest that guilt motivates healthy behaviors, yet others show that guilt impairs the self-control needed to abstain from unhealthy behaviors. Method: One hundred ninety parents reported how guilty they felt about their current child-feeding habits. Parents then chose food for their child in a virtual reality buffet and reported their intentions to improve child-feeding and own eating behavior in the future. Finally, parents were offered candy while they completed an unrelated survey. Results: Parents with greater guilt reported stronger intentions to improve both feeding (b =.27, p =.010) and eating (b =.21, p =.019) in the future. However, among parents with higher (but not lower) BMI, those who reported greater guilt served more unhealthy foods for their child in the buffet (b =.32, p =.010) and were more likely to eat candy at the end of the study (b =.92, p =.004). Further analyses revealed that guilt only predicted greater feeding intentions when parents had served relatively more unhealthy foods in the buffet (b =.43, p =.001). Conclusions: Findings echo the mixed conceptualization of guilt shown in previous literature on health behavior. More research is necessary to understand the long-term influence of guilt on eating and feeding behavior and the circumstances under which guilt is associated with detrimental versus healthy behavior.