The Silent Agony of Getting Your Food First todayheadline

Why We Torture Ourselves at Dinner

Sarah stared at her steaming plate of pasta while her friend’s order remained trapped somewhere in the restaurant kitchen.

The internal debate raged: eat now and risk seeming rude, or wait and let her carbonara turn into a congealed mess. She chose torture—waiting until her friend’s meal arrived fifteen minutes later.

New research reveals Sarah isn’t alone in this peculiar form of dining self-punishment. A comprehensive study involving nearly 2,000 participants across six experiments shows that people consistently believe they should wait for others to receive their food before eating—even when those same people wouldn’t expect their dining companions to show such restraint.

The Psychology Behind the Wait

The research team, led by Professor Irene Scopelliti from Bayes Business School and colleagues from Tilburg University, discovered what they call a “self-other difference” in dining expectations. When participants imagined receiving their food first, they felt strongly that they should wait. But when they imagined their dining partner getting served first, they were far more relaxed about that person starting to eat immediately.

“The decision of when to start eating food in the company of others is a very common dilemma,” explained Professor Janina Steinmetz, co-author of the study. “Norm adherence dictates that we wait until all food is served before starting, and disregarding it feels rude and discourteous to us.”

The researchers found this pattern held true whether participants were dining with friends or acquaintances, and regardless of whether they were asked what people “should” do versus what they “would” do in practice.

Why We Overestimate Our Own Discomfort

The root of this dining dilemma lies in our limited access to others’ internal experiences. When you’re the one with hot food cooling on your plate, you can feel every twinge of guilt, every moment of social awkwardness, and every benefit of appearing considerate. But you can’t access those same psychological experiences in your dining companion.

The study revealed that people expected to feel significantly better about waiting themselves compared to how they thought others would feel in the same situation. They also anticipated feeling much worse about eating first than they believed others would experience.

“We can feel our own internal discomfort, guilt, and the positive feelings from appearing considerate, but we can’t fully access what others are experiencing internally,” noted Professor Scopelliti. “So, while we might feel genuinely awful about eating before others get their food, we assume others won’t feel as strongly about it.”

The Interventions That Failed

Recognizing this psychological asymmetry, the researchers tested two potential solutions. First, they asked some participants to explicitly consider their dining companion’s perspective—imagining what the other person might think and feel. This perspective-taking exercise only slightly reduced the self-other difference and didn’t eliminate it.

Even more surprisingly, when researchers told participants that their dining companion had explicitly encouraged them to start eating, the self-other difference persisted. People still felt they should wait more than they expected others to wait, even with explicit permission to begin.

Key Findings That Challenge Common Assumptions

The research unveiled several counterintuitive patterns:

• 91% of people across 91 countries reported that waiting for others is expected in their culture
• People consistently underestimate how much others care about dining etiquette violations
• The psychological discomfort of eating first is largely internal and invisible to observers
• Even explicit encouragement to break the norm doesn’t eliminate our internal resistance

These findings challenge the assumption that social norms operate symmetrically. While we might think everyone feels equally bound by dining etiquette, the reality is more complex.

Real-World Implications

The study’s insights extend far beyond academic curiosity. Professor Steinmetz pointed out that if food quality depends on temperature, waiting can genuinely diminish the dining experience. “People will wait to feel polite, but if the quality of their food is dependent on factors like temperature it may not taste as nice when they finally do start eating.”

The researchers suggest restaurants could improve customer satisfaction by serving all members of a party simultaneously whenever possible. The findings also apply to any service context where people receive items at different times within a group—from office catering to family gatherings.

The next time you find yourself in Sarah’s situation, remember that your dining companion likely minds far less than you think if you start eating. Your internal anguish over seeming impolite may be causing more suffering than the supposed rudeness itself would create.

As the researchers conclude, this isn’t just about politeness—it’s about recognizing how much we systematically underestimate others’ internal emotional experiences, a pattern that extends well beyond the dinner table into broader social dynamics and human relationships.

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