Qin Bian | foodandbrandlab

Qin Bian

Hangzhou, China

University of California, Berkeley

What do you plan to do in the future, career-wise?

I am really interested in both food psychology and intergroup relationships. In the future, I want to combine these two psychology topics and investigate how food can help smooth the relationship between two people/cultures.

What projects did you work on this summer?

 Taste of Success: This project explores how one’s sense of success will influence his or her taste perceptions of different foods. I worked with Dr. Aner Tal, brainstorming experimental design ideas, creating stimuli, contacting authors of studies that used similar stimuli, and developing the survey online.
 Distraction Influence on Belief & Taste Judgment: This project explores how one’s beliefs and taste judgments may change when he or she is distracted. I conducted a literature review, brainstormed experiment designs, and created an online survey using Qualtrics software.

 Behavioral Event Modeling and Condom Consideration: For this project, I read and categorized key triggering events, identified by 66 students at Cornell, which tend to lead to risky sexual behavior (i.e. not using a condom), recording their suggested interventions. This study illuminated that changing small “environment cues” has a large impact that could not only nudge people to eat healthier but also influence people’s decisions and behaviors in other public health fields.
 Calories on Magazine Covers: I collected 101 magazine covers over a time span of 50 years and analyzed the depicted foods’ total calories, calories per serving, and serving size in relation to the cover page size. With the data from this project I drafted a paper.

Any advice for future interns?

You need to know what you want to gain most from this internship. There are so many different projects focusing on different topics, or methods of study going on in the Food and Brand Lab! The internship provides endless opportunities, but also requires time management and focus to really get the most out of all the opportunities!