Asparagus Love Story

The article Asparagus, a Love Story by Cara Laney et al was about seeing if false beliefs or false memories can alter the way that subjects in the experiment feel about foods. There were two experiments conducted, the first one involved giving the subjects false feedback about having liked a specific food as kids. Then seeing the consequences of giving them false feedback. The second experiment was about trying to replicate the results of the first experiment and to see if just seeing asparagus will make it more appealing after the false belief manipulation. Nearly half of the participants in the study were able to be convinced that as a child they loved asparagus even though originally they recalled otherwise. This resulted in the formation

A problem I had with the study only showing a picture was that it did not really have the participants interact in real life situations. It had them only do questionnaires, assessments, or look at pictures. It did not have them actually go out and buy the food or go to an actual restaurant to see if what they stated is what they would actually do once in that particular setting. Also for both of the experiments the majority of the participants were females, there should have been at least an even number of male and female participants. They also could have used more than just asparagus to test their theory, it may be possible that it is easier to plant false beliefs or memories for some foods than it is for others. There was also no mention of whether the effects of the false belief manipulations were long term or just short term. People memories tend to not be the most reliable as this study has shown and mentioned in the beginning of the article, over time there is the possibility that they might go back to disliking asparagus. The study also mentioned that the findings of this study could help with developing healthy eating habits but the researchers did not actually test out that theory because no behavioral measures were