The adoption of physical activity and eating behaviors among persons with obesity and in the general population: the role of implicit attitudes within the Theory of Planned Behavior

Obesity can be prevented by the combined adoption of a regular physical activity (PA) and healthy eating behaviors (EB). Researchers mainly focused on socio-cognitive models, such as the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), to identify the psychological antecedents of these behaviors. However, few studies were interested in testing the potential contribution of automatic processes in the prediction of PA and EB. Thus, the main objective of this study was to explore the specific role of implicit attitudes in the pattern of prediction of self-reported PA and EB in the TPB framework, among persons with obesity and in adults from the general population. One hundred and fifty-three adults participated to this cross-sectional study among which 59 obese persons (74% women, age: 50.6 ± 12.3 years, BMI: 36.8 ± 4.03 kg m^–²) and 94 people from the general population (51% women; age: 34.7 ± 8.9 years). Implicit attitudes toward PA and EB were estimated through two Implicit Association Tests. TPB variables, PA and EB were assessed by questionnaire. Regarding to the prediction of PA, a significant contribution of implicit attitudes emerged in obese people, β = .25; 95%[CI: .01, .50]; P = .044, beyond the TPB variables, contrary to participants from the general population. The present study suggests that implicit attitudes play a specific role among persons with obesity regarding PA. Other studies are needed to examine which kind of psychological processes are specifically associated with PA and EB among obese people.     

Scale‐dependent automatic shifts in brand evaluation standards

Different schema-based expectations for competing brands can produce shifting evaluative standards in consumers' relative ratings of these brands. This shift in standards differentially affects objective (number-based) and subjective (word-based) rating scales. Several studies support the proposition that a brand rated as objectively inferior to another can be subjectively perceived as equivalent to—or even better than—the same brand. Such anomalous response inconsistency originates in consumers' recourse to different expectations for the competing brands and their automatic adjustment of expectations for the inferior brand when responding to subjective measures. The implicit relaxing of evaluative standards for the objectively dominated brand leads to an unconscious upward bias in its subjective ratings. The effect is moderated by consumer expertise and is asymmetric—it is not accompanied by an escalation of evaluative standards for objectively dominating brands.     

The susceptibility of mental accounting principles to evaluation mode effects

The present research shows that the predictions and outcomes of mental‐accounting tests depend on whether preferences are measured separately (one at a time) or jointly (comparatively). Across five studies, we show that joint evaluation weakens some decision biases (the theater ticket problem, the calculator and jacket problem), but exacerbates others (the basketball game problem). Joint evaluations serve as a check on whether people think the answers they give in separate evaluations make sense or require adjustment. We discuss how the findings impact (1) tests of mental accounting predictions (between vs. within subjects designs), and (2) the normative status of mental accounting. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Selective attention and avoidance on a pictorial cueing task during stress in clinically anxious and depressed participants

Although it is well established that attentional biases exist in anxious populations, the specific components of visual orienting towards and away from emotional stimuli are not well delineated. The present study was designed to examine these processes. We used a modified spatial cueing task to assess the speed of engagement and disengagement from supraliminal and masked pictorial cues depicting threat, dysphoria, or neutral content in 36 clinically anxious, 41 depressed and 41 control participants. Participants were randomly assigned to a stress or neutral condition. During stress, anxious participants were slow to disengage from masked left hemifield pictures depicting threat or dysphoria, but were quick to disengage from supraliminal threat pictures. Information processing in anxious participants during stress was characterized by early selective attention of emotional stimuli, occurring prior to full conscious awareness, followed by effortful avoidance of threat. Depressed participants were distinct from the anxious group, displaying selective attention for stimuli depicting dysphoria, but not threat, during the neutral condition. In sum, attentional biases in clinical populations are associated with difficulties in the disengagement component of visual orienting. Further, a vigilant-avoidant pattern of attentional bias may represent a strategic attempt to compensate for the early activation of a fear response.     

Three ways to resist temptation: The independent contributions of executive attention, inhibitory control, and affect regulation to the impulse control of eating behavior

It is generally assumed that impulse control plays a major role in many areas of self-regulation such as eating behavior. However, the exact mechanisms that enable the control of impulsive determinants such as automatic affective reactions toward tempting stimuli are not well understood. “The present research investigated the separate moderator effects of three factors of impulse control, executive attention, inhibitory control, and affect regulation on the relationship between automatic affective reactions toward candy and subsequent candy consumption.” Results showed that all three factors reduced the influence of automatic affective reactions on eating behavior, indicating improved impulse control. Implications for self-regulation research are discussed.     

Differential partitioning of extended experiences

This article focuses on the effect of the perceived cohesiveness of experiences, whether composed of single or multiple parts, on their overall hedonic evaluations. Four experiments demonstrate the effects of partitioning on decision makers’ evaluation of extended experiences. First, patterns (i.e., improving vs. deteriorating trends) strongly influence how experiences are evaluated. Second, increased partitioning of an experience reduces the effect of the overall trend and results in more equal weighting of its parts. Third, breaking experiences at strategic points (i.e., local maxima and minima) influences the overall evaluation of experiences as well as the prediction of their future levels. These results suggest that components of sequences are evaluated similarly to the way whole sequences are evaluated and that experiences composed of multiple components are evaluated relatively more on the basis of their individual intensity and less based on their overall pattern.     

The impurity of “pure” indexicals

Within the class of indexicals, a distinction is often made between “pure” or “automatic” indexicals on one hand, and demonstratives or “discretionary” indexicals on the other. The idea is supposed to be that certain indexicals refer automatically and invariably to a particular feature of the utterance context: ‘I’ refers to the speaker, ‘now’ to the time of utterance, ‘here’ to the place of utterance, etc. Against this view, I present cases where reference shifts from the speaker, time, or place of utterance to some other object, time, or place. I consider and reject the claim that these counterexamples to the automatic indexical theory all involve non-literal uses of indexicals and argue that they cannot be explained away on the grounds that they involve conversational implicature or pretense.     

Contextual Sources of Ambivalence

When will people become ambivalent about politics? One possibility is that the roots of ambivalence lie within the individual, with differences in political knowledge and attitude strength predicting whether a person internalizes the conflicts of politics. Alternately, attitudinal ambivalence could result from structural differences in the way political choices are presented in the wider political environment. We explore the degree to which different environments promote or limit ambivalence using a matching approach in conjunction with a set of multilevel models. We find that campaign environments can induce candidate ambivalence. In presidential elections, campaign efforts promote ambivalence most when competition between partisan campaign efforts is high. In House elections, campaign spending has a direct effect on levels of candidate ambivalence, where a candidate's spending decreases ambivalence about that candidate and increases ambivalence about opponents.     

The associations between Self-Criticism and Dependency and incidental learning of interpersonal and achievement words

Personality trait-congruent implicit content processing was studied experimentally. In Experiment-1 (N = 132), individual differences in Self-Criticism were most strongly associated with incidental learning of negative achievement words, whereas individual differences in Dependency were most strongly associated with incidental learning of negative interpersonal words. In Experiment-2 (N = 172), individual differences interacted with processing tendencies in predicting negative affect. Highly dependent and highly self-critical individuals experienced higher negative affect if they were low in incidental learning of positive interpersonal words. Overall, these findings indicate that Self-Criticism and Dependency have significantly differential impacts on implicit cognitive processes.