Gryphon's Aeire Food Fact - University Professor Finds Correlation Between

University professor finds correlation between soup and personality
Dec. 8, 2000
The Daily Illini

by Erika Rowell
The Daily Illini

   Like to curl up with a warm bowl of tomato soup? If so, the study 
says you')re an adventure lover who's more social and enjoys books 
and pets.
People who like tomato soup can't stop talking about their pets. 
Those who favor chili-beef soup usually participated in high school 
sports. At least this is what area waitresses and a study by Brian 
Wansink, University professor of agricultural and consumer economics 
and nutritional sciences, say.

In a study on differences in individual food tastes and why they 
differ, Wansink correlated the soups people prefer with personality 
traits.

"We don't know what factors make you like chocolate and me vanilla," 
said Wansink. "The basic idea is to get at the psychological factors 
as to why people like the things they do."

In order to find the correlation between soup and personality, 
Wansink went to the experts: experienced waitresses.

"We needed someone familiar with people and soup, so we went to 32 
different waitresses in the Midwest who had around an average of 
eight years experience," Wansink said.

In Champaign, the study involved waitresses from the Elite Diner and 
Merry Ann's Diner. Wansink said that if you ask an experienced 
waitress, "If the soup of the day is (i.e. tomato), what does this 
person look like?," the waitress can tell you what the person is 
like, how they tip and what they eat, among other traits.

The study found around 27 waitresses who had strong opinions about 
what these different types of people were like.

Lisa Moreno, a waitress at the Elite Diner in Urbana, has eight years 
of waitressing experience and said she often has an idea of what 
people want when they come in. When asked about a typical tomato-soup 
eater, Moreno said it will probably be a woman who is middle-aged or 
older.

After talking with waitresses, the next step in the study was a 
random telephone survey across the 50 states, assessing people's 
opinion of 12 common soup products. The survey included adults over 
18 and included 602 women and 401 men, according to a press release. 
Wansink looked at the people with strong preferences for a soup and 
then went back to the waitresses, asking which profile went with 
which soup. He said the waitresses found the task easy.

The results of the study were calculated as a two-stage statistical 
clustering algorithm.

"Now that we can show differences (between soup and personalities), 
we can show how people who eat (foods like) soy are different from 
people who don't eat soy," Wansink said. "From here, we can determine 
how to target these people and encourage them to eat soy. Soup was 
just a fun context to look at (these) things from."

The four most popular soups from the survey were chicken noodle, 
tomato, minestrone and vegetable, according to a press release.

According to the soup personality profile, someone who orders 
chicken-noodle soup is high on the church-going scale, fond of pets 
and more likely to be stubborn and less outdoorsy. Minestrone's fans 
were more likely to be physically fit, nutritionally conscious, 
family-spirited, unlikely to own a pet and on a restricted diet. 
Vegetable-soup eaters fall into the category of a homebody at heart, 
less likely to be a world traveler or spontaneous and more likely to 
read family and home magazines. Tomato-soup lovers are more along the 
lines of adventure lovers, are more social and tend to enjoy books 
and their pets, according to a press release.

Soup, according to Wansink, is a comfort food.

"Soup consumption seemed to mirror childhood memories and remembered 
comforts," Wansink said in a press release.

Wansink said that men like warm comfort foods while women prefer cold 
comfort foods. Ice cream topped the lists of both men and women, but 
the next three for women included chocolate, chips and cookies, while 
men had meat, pasta, pizza and soup as the next choices on their list.

"As people get older, past the age of 35, soup becomes more of a 
comfort food," Wansink said.

"If someone orders steak or chicken, you can immediately (list 
aspects of their) personality type," he said. Even when you use more 
subtle foods, you can still tell a difference."


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