Flavors of desire: Cognitive representations of appetitive stimuli and their motivational implications.

Abstract

How do people cognitively represent appetitive stimuli? Do interactions with appetitive stimuli shape how we think about them, and do such representations affect motivation to consume? Although much is known about how people respond to appetitive stimuli, little is known about how they are represented. We examine this in the domain of sugar-sweetened drinks, which constitute a significant self-control problem for many people. Given people's rich and diverse learning histories of consuming them, we propose that representations of these stimuli will show high variability, and that they will reflect idiosyncratic simulations, or reenactments, of previous consumption experiences. Representing drinks in terms of consuming and enjoying them may predict the motivation to consume. In three experiments (total N = 457), participants described nonalcoholic drinks in a "feature listing task," a free production task to assess cognitive representations of concepts through natural language. We also measured consumption frequency, desire to drink, and intake (Experiment 3), and we measured (Experiments 1 and 2) or manipulated (Experiment 3) thirst. Illustrating the variability of participants' representations of drinks, participants reported a large number of different features (210-331 unique features per drink). Drinks were described heavily with words related to consumption and reward experiences, especially sugary drinks, and especially when consumed frequently. Consumption and reward features predicted desire and intake, more strongly than thirst. These findings suggest that simulations of previous rewarding interactions play a key role in representations of appetitive stimuli, and that understanding these representations may be useful across domains of appetitive behavior.

Mental simulation across sensory modalities predicts attractiveness of food concepts.

“…This suggests mental simulation of sensory information more strongly underlies unhealthy food concepts than healthy food concepts. A similar finding has been observed for drinks: Participants list more sensory experiences for sugary drinks compared to water and alcohol (Keesman et al, 2018), and listing such consumption simulation features predicts desire and ingestion (Papies, Claassen, et al, 2022). Although these experiments demonstrate the tremendous variability of participants’ representation of food and drinks, with hundreds of unique features listed per item, the role of individual sensory modalities was not explored.…”

Motivations underlying healthy dietary adoption intentions: Evidence from university students in the Czech Republic

“…Sensory appeal influences consumers' decisions about what and when to eat and drink (Pearcey -Zhan 2018). Unsurprisingly, consumers favor pleasant and tasty food (Papies et al 2021). The more attractive a dish is in terms of appearance, taste, and aroma, the more inclined a consumer is to consider the dish superior and to eventually select it.…”

Challenges in the conceptualization of trait self‐control as a psychological construct

“…Hence, such dominant response tendencies must be inhibited in the moment or circumvented in advance. An often‐overlooked observation is that dominant response tendencies vary both inter‐ (e.g., Papies et al., 2021; Stillman et al., 2017) and intraindividually (e.g., Boles et al., 2021; Lally & Gardner, 2013). We argue that trait self‐control conceptualizations would benefit from addressing this observation.…”