Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

experimental group was a comparison to spoons, which mirrored the control group’s majority (see figure
10.)
What does the abundant use of the word spoon imply? It could be an indication of time of day these
surveys were administered at either 10:00 in the morning or 11:30 in the morning times that are potentially
meal times. Meal times for the non-collegiate set, that is. Upon coming to college, normative eating
patterns are severely disrupted. Irregular class and work schedules coupled with added amounts of stress
and the absence of home-cooked, well balanced, regularly served meals might well effect cognitive
processes, including recognition and analysis of non-food objects 10 . It is possible that the merest suggestion
of an eating utensil, such as the rounded concave forms of the end of the cylinders on the mask, could incite
Figure 11, Control Group answers: “Which way should
this object be oriented?”
food-related thoughts in the hungry and thus appear more
Cylinders
Inferior
59%
Cylinders
Superio
r
41%
spoon-like.
On the whole, the control group expressed their
descriptions in more zoomorphic/anthropomorphic language.
15 % of control group answers specify that the mask resembles
a face or facial features, and 15% of control group answers
indicate the presence of horns or antlers. Conversely, the
experimental group described this mask in more inorganic,
structurally oriented terms. 16% of experimental answers
given referred to the mask as a sculpture and 13% of answers
given made reference to the cylindrical protrusions as pipes.
The delineation between organic and non-organic descriptors could correlate with the fact that
America is a highly industrialized country, as demonstrated by Fortune 500’s top ten corporations of 2009,
a list that includes energy providers, car manufacturers, communications corporations, and large box goods
stores exclusively 11 . In the Midwest, the accoutrements of industry are impossible to ignore as factories and
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