Biting Versus Chewing: Eating Style and Social Aggression in Children

Does biting food provoke subsequent aggressive behavior more than eating a food that only needs to be chewed? To examine this, children were served afternoon meals of chicken either on-the-bone or cut from the bone into small 2 cm pieces. Their behavior was video-taped for 10 minutes and then coded by five researchers. On the days the children had to tear the meat from the bone, they exhibited more socially aggressive behavior than when they ate chicken that had been cut up for them. This aggressive behavior included more physical contact others, more violations of instructions, and more destruction of tableware. These findings suggest there may be a connection between how people eat and how they interact with each other. Such a finding would have overlapping interdisciplinary implications in cultural anthropology, sociology, and developmental psychology.