Brian Wansink
Brian Wansink ran a food and consumer behaviour laboratory at Cornell whose studies on serving sizes, plates and packaging became some of the most widely repeated results in popular psychology. This page exists because one of those studies is the original that an independent 2024 replication tested, and a reader meeting the name on that page should be able to see why the original itself is not cited.
Who they are
Work from this laboratory is not used as evidence on this site. The reason is bibliographic. In September 2018 Cornell University stated that it could not vouch for the validity of a set of the laboratory's papers and could not produce the original data (Cornell University statement, 20 September 2018), and the journals concerned retracted them, six of them in the JAMA Network journals on 19 September 2018 (JAMA retraction notices). Where the original data cannot be produced and the institution has withdrawn its assurance that the results are sound, the published claim has no evidence attached to it, and there is nothing left for a reader to weigh. That is the whole of the reason, and it would apply in exactly the same way to any work in the same position.
The governing principle on this site is that evidence status attaches to claims and never to authors. This page applies it: the claims are set aside because the evidence behind them has been withdrawn, and the laboratory is named only so that those claims are not picked up in articles by accident. Nothing here goes beyond the institutional statement and the retraction notices.
Key papers
Listed only so they can be recognised and avoided.
Wansink, B., Painter, J. E., & North, J. (2005). "Bottomless bowls: why visual cues of portion size may influence intake", Obesity Research, 13(1), 93 to 100. Not cited. No retraction notice could be found for this specific paper, and no independent confirmation of its data could be found either. The 2024 replication is cited in its place.
van Ittersum, K., & Wansink, B. (2012). Journal of Consumer Research, on plate size and the Delboeuf illusion. Not used. See Plate Size, the claim that does not survive without it.
Key ideas
The bottomless bowl was re-earned by other people, and that is the useful part. Alejandra Lopez and colleagues ran a preregistered direct replication in 2024, with 464 participants against the original fifty-four. The effect held at roughly half the original size, and people again did not believe they had eaten more than the others. So the underlying effect survives on other people's evidence. The citation is Lopez. The original is named only as the thing being replicated, with its status stated in the same sentence.
The neighbouring claim is fine and comes from elsewhere. The Portion Size Effect rests on Barbara Rolls's work and a Cochrane review, neither of which is touched by any of this.
The plate-size claim is the one that does not survive. Its strongest version runs through this laboratory, and this site does not carry it as established.
The results are still circulating. Retracted findings continue to be quoted long after the notices appear, which is why a page like this is more useful than silence.
Concepts on this site
Research Misconduct, the rule this page applies
Plate Size, the claim that does not survive without this laboratory's papers
The Portion Size Effect, the neighbouring claim that does, on other people's evidence
Sources
- JAMA Network retraction notices, 19 September 2018, covering six papers.
- Cornell University statement, 20 September 2018, on the validity of the papers and the availability of the original data.
- Lopez, A., and colleagues (2024). Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 153(2), 275 to 281. The preregistered replication that this site cites in place of the 2005 paper.
- Vault record, 2026-09-11, and the living-person rule of 2026-09-13, under which this page is limited to the institutional statement and the retraction notices.