Restaurants and dinner hosts could improve dining experiences and reduce social awkwardness by serving guests at the same time, a new study has found.
We have all faced that situation in a restaurant or at a dinner party: our food has arrived but we find ourselves waiting for others at the table to be served before starting. This long-established norm is the subject of new research co-authored by Bayes Business School , that shows we are more concerned about violating this practice ourselves than we are about others doing so.
WATCH: Authors of the study explain its outcomes
The research by Irene Scopelliti , Professor of Marketing and Behavioural Science, and Janina Steinmetz , Professor of Marketing at Bayes, along with Dr Anna Paley from the Tilburg School of Economics and Management, examined how participants viewed their own compliance of the norm versus their expectations of dining companions across six experiments.
Participants imagined dining with a friend and either receiving food first or watching their co-diner receive theirs. Those 'receiving' food first were asked to what extent they should wait or eat on a numerical scale, while those waiting for food were asked what they thought their dining partner should do.
Results displayed a 'self-other' difference, in that those receiving food first believed they should wait to a far greater extent than their dining partners expected them to.
Further experiments explored why this happens. Participants were asked how they would feel about their co-diner eating or waiting, and how they would expect their companion to feel about them. Results showed that people expected to feel better about waiting themselves – and worse about starting to eat – if their food arrived first, than they predicted others would feel in the same situation.
The study also tested whether interventions might influence behaviour – such as encouraging participants to consider their co-diner's perspective or telling them that their dining partner had explicitly invited them to start eating.
The research suggest this is why people would still encourage co-diners to break the norm, and that restaurants should avoid putting diners in this situation where possible.
Professor Steinmetz said:
"The decision of when to start eating food in the company of others is a very common dilemma.
"Norm adherence dictates that we wait until all food is served before starting, and disregarding it feels rude and discourteous to us. Surprisingly, this feeling barely changes even when another person explicitly asks us to go ahead. It occurs because people have greater access to their own internal feelings – such as appearing considerate or avoiding social discomfort – than to others' psychological experiences.
"In these situations, we should be aware that we're only waiting for our own benefit, and co-diners probably mind far less than we think if we wanted to go ahead and eat.
"People will wait to feel polite, but if the quality of their food is dependent on factors like temperature it may not taste as nice when they finally do start eating."
Professor Scopelliti added:
"This is not just about politeness: it's about psychological access.
"We can feel our own internal discomfort, guilt, and the positive feelings from appearing considerate, but we can't fully access what others are experiencing internally. So, while we might feel genuinely awful about eating before others get their food, we assume others won't feel as strongly about it.
"Results of our study have implications for restaurants and beyond. Any service where people receive food at different times within a group creates similar psychological dynamics. Providers often optimise for efficiency, without realising that some people experience genuine discomfort when they receive service before others in their group.
"The research shows how much we systematically underestimate others' internal emotional experiences, which contributes to broader understanding of social norms and group dynamics."
' Wait or Eat? Self-other differences in a commonly held food norm' , by Dr Anna Paley, Professor Irene Scopelliti and Professor Janina Steinmetz is published in Appetite.
