The Light = Healthy Intuition

This research documents a “light = healthy” intuition, such that consumers perceive foods that weigh less are healthier than their heavier counterparts with the same serving size. Subsequently, consumers consume a larger quantity of lighter-weight foods. The intuition is based on a coactivation of two meanings of the word “light”: light in physical weight and light in calorie content. An implicit attitude test finds support for this association between physical weight and food healthiness. ​Subsequently, physically lighter foods are perceived to be healthier because they are assumed to contain fewer calories. In line with the proposed coactivation mechanism, the intuition is bidirectional, where consumers also expect healthier foods to weigh less. Consequently, they discredit health claims issued for heavier foods. Finally, it was found that activating a competing intuition is effective at debiasing the “light = healthy” intuition.     

Multidimensional eating profiles associated with personality traits during emerging adulthood: A cluster-analytic approach

IntroductionPersonality traits can give a fuller understanding for eating behaviors, such as food choice, (un)healhty eating.ObjectiveTo examine eating styles with a multidimensional perspective considering cognitive, affective and conative (or behavioral) components of eating styles in emerging adulthood, and how they may be related to the Big Five and impulsivity traits.MethodsSelf-reported questionnaires were used to explore the association between the eating styles, Big five traits and facets of impulsivity among young French adults (n = 450; Mean Age = 20.84 years; SD = 2.4, with 79.6% of women).ResultsOn the basis of cluster analysis, six eating styles were identified: Healthier, Uninhibited, Dysregulated, Stress-related, Restrictive and Ethical restraint eaters. Results suggest that Uninhibited eaters reported lower scores on Conscientiousness and higher scores on Negative and Positive urgency. The Dysregulated group had lower scores on Extraversion, and high scores on Neuroticism, Negative urgency and Lack of premeditation. Restrictive eaters showed low levels of Openness and Lack of premeditation. The Ethical restraint style was characterized by low scores on Agreeableness and Positive urgency. The ability or inability to cope with both emotional distress and positive and negative impulsive behaviors was related to young adult's eating cognitions and behaviors.ConclusionConsidering the existence of subtypes of eaters and separate associated personality-related traits, an individual differences perspective (e.g., age, gender, disposition to control one's emotional experiences) should be incorporated.     

Is paranoia a defence against or an expression of low self‐esteem?

Paranoia has been hypothesized to be negatively correlated with self‐esteem. However, hypotheses differ about how low self‐esteem might produce paranoia. The paranoia as defense model views paranoia as a defensive reaction against low self‐esteem. In contrast, the paranoia as expression model views paranoia in part as a reflection of low self‐esteem. In the current study, paranoia was negatively associated with global explicit self‐esteem, self‐competence, self‐liking and self‐serving attributional style, but unassociated with implicit self‐esteem as measured with the Implicit Association Test. In contrast, facets of narcissism, which also have been hypothesized to be associated with defensive self‐processing, were associated with defensiveness. Overall, these results suggest that paranoia is better represented by the expression model. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Using stop signals to inhibit chronic dieters' responses toward palatable foods

Palatable foods in the environment can unintentionally trigger reactions to obtain them, which may interfere with dieting attempts. We tested a strategy to facilitate dieting behavior that makes use of behavioral stop signals that should instantly inhibit chronic dieters’ responses toward palatable foods. Participants performed a go/no-go task in which go cues and no-go cues (i.e., the behavioral stop signals) were presented with pictures of palatable foods and control objects. In Study 1, we tested the immediate behavioral effect of presenting stop signals near palatable foods in a reaction time paradigm. In Study 2 we assessed consumption of palatable food that had either consistently been associated with no-go cues, or not. Results show that no-go cues instantly inhibited responses toward palatable foods especially among chronic dieters. Moreover, across a one day period chronic dieters consumed less of a food that had consistently been associated with no-go cues. Stop signals thus appear a promising tool for chronic dieters to control behavior to palatable foods, and we discuss the merits and potential applications of this tool for facilitating dieting behavior.     

A bioinspired model of short-term satiety of hunger influenced by food properties in virtual creatures

The behavior of the human is continually changed as a consequence of various drives which human is predisposed also of your survival instinct. Among the basic drives of the human, there are the physiological needs and is precisely the hunger that motivates the food intake to get the energy that the body requires via food. The regulation of hunger allows to stop the food intake by means of the homeostatic and hedonic control which are influenced by the food properties. The process that consists of ending the food intake is known as short-term satiety and is important because it limits the amount of food intake; Otherwise, an over-consumed affect the organism functioning negatively. In this paper, we propose a conceptual model for the generation of short-term satiety behaviors based on neuroscientific evidence for virtual creatures. The conceptual model proposed is implemented in a distributed system-a virtual creature endowed with this implementation is placed in a virtual environment to analyze its behavior. The analysis shows how the virtual creature modifies its hunger level (behavior) based on food’s properties. The results show the execution of the process when the creature interacts with the environment.