Jutta Mata & Elena Wurth, (U.Mannheim). Setting the Table for Change: Social Contexts in Healthy and Sustainable Eating

Séminaire invité (Claudia Teran Escobar, P2SC) dans le cadre du lancement du projet ANR NO-MORE-MEAT

Jutta Mata & Elena Wurth, School of Social Sciences, University of Mannheim

Setting the Table for Change: Social Contexts in Healthy and Sustainable Eating

Unbalanced diets and related diseases are currently among the biggest challenges to public health and among the greatest individual contributions to carbon emissions. Many behavioral change interventions have had limited success in long-term change of diets and eating behaviors – potentially, because they have conceptualized eating as an individual activity. Yet, eating is social. In this talk, Jutta Mata presents a theoretical synthesis and empirical research on the role of across different social contexts in eating behavior using various tools of the psychological and computational social sciences. She will present studies focusing especially on families and their mealtimes, but also include romantic couples, peers, and online communities. Elena Wurth will focus on the specific social context of AI- and Large Language Models-based conversations on reducing meat consumption. She showcases studies that explore the potential and limitations of AI-generated persuasion, and highlights the ethical, psychological, and societal implications of using advanced technologies to influence behavior change. (Health) psychology should aim to harness the power of a social approach to achieving long-term change of eating behaviors and diets, as well as health behaviors more broadly, and discuss the potential of new technologies to tackle issues of sustainability, such as climate change and health equity.