Researchers report that people feel more uncomfortable starting to eat when their meal arrives first than they expect their dining companions would. The self–other gap persisted across multiple experiments and was only modestly reduced by perspective-taking prompts or by a companion explicitly encouraging them to begin.
A new study examined a familiar dining rule: waiting to eat until everyone at the table has been served. The research found that people anticipate feeling substantially more uncomfortable breaking the “wait until everyone is served” norm than they believe others would feel if roles were reversed.
The paper—titled “Wait or Eat? self-other differences in a commonly held food norm”—was co-authored by Anna Paley, Irene Scopelliti and Janina Steinmetz and published in the journal Appetite (Volume 212, August 2025; article 108021). In six experiments involving a total of 1,907 participants, the authors tested how people judge the norm for themselves versus for someone else.
Across the studies, participants were asked to imagine eating with a friend in situations where either they received their food first or they were the one still waiting. Those who imagined being served first reported a stronger sense that they “should” wait before starting to eat than participants expected a dining companion would feel in the same position.
The researchers also explored people’s emotional expectations. Participants anticipated they would feel better about waiting and worse about eating immediately than they believed others would feel, contributing to what the authors described as a consistent self–other gap.
Two interventions were tested to see whether the gap could be reduced. Prompting participants to take the other person’s perspective reduced the difference somewhat but did not eliminate it. And in one experiment, having a companion explicitly encourage the person who was served first to begin eating did not significantly change the self–other gap.
In comments accompanying the release, Steinmetz said the decision of when to start eating in a group is a common social dilemma, and that the discomfort people feel about starting early “barely changes even when another person explicitly asks us to go ahead.” Scopelliti attributed the mismatch in part to “psychological access,” arguing that people can feel their own discomfort or guilt directly but cannot fully access others’ internal experiences.
The findings suggest that in restaurants and other shared-service settings, serving everyone at the same time could reduce awkwardness for some diners. The authors also argued the dynamics may extend beyond meals to other situations in which members of a group receive service at noticeably different times.
