Flavours 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 re-enactments, 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 non-alcoholic 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 (Exp. 3), and we measured (Exp. 1 and 2) or manipulated (Exp. 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 behaviour.

Grounding Motivation for Behaviour Change

“…In contrast, the percentages of sensory features (e.g., taste, texture, temperature) for the attractive stimuli was typically around 30%, and overall consumption and reward features (all sensory and action features, context features, immediate positive consequence features) averaged around 45-49 %. Health features did not predict intake of drinks (Papies et al, 2021). Consistent with our theory, this again suggests that people do not represent appetitive stimuli very much in terms of their long-term implications or other abstract or distal features, but rather in terms of the immediate and concrete experience of consuming them.…”

“…In Papies (2013), 8% of features listed for tempting foods (chips, cookies) referred to negative long-term health consequences (e.g., "makes you fat", "unhealthy"), and 7% of features listed for neutral foods (e.g., rice, apple) referred to positive long-term health consequences (e.g., "healthy", "nutritious"). Similar percentage of health features were found in feature listing for nonalcoholic drinks (Papies et al, 2021). Here, across three experiments, the mentions of positive health features for sugar-sweetened beverages and of negative health features for water were negligible, which is not very surprising.…”

“…Results showed that each group described "their" foods more in terms of consumption and reward features, such as taste, texture, eating context, and pleasure, than "the other" food, which was described more in terms of situation-independent features, such as ingredients, health, and food category. Thus, as we had seen for drinks (Papies et al, 2021), participants described items that they consumed more frequently more in terms of eating and enjoying them. Across foods and groups, the use of consumption and reward features was associated with higher attractiveness ratings, again similar to the patterns seen for drinks.…”

“…A recent set of experiments (Papies et al, 2021) extended these findings to the domain of sugar-sweetened beverages and found again that attractive drinks (i.e., sugar-sweetened beverages) were more described in terms of consumption and reward than neutral drinks (i.e., bottled and tap water). In three experiments (total N = 457), this pattern was found when listing "typical" features or "simply describing" drinks, and when doing so in response to drink words, drink images, or actual drinks.…”

No evidence that consumption and reward words on labels increase the appeal of bottled water

“…Survey data and in-the-moment assessments of eating motives reveal that taste and reward are the principal motives driving food and beverage choices (Block et al, 2013;Glanz et al, 1998;Wahl et al, 2020). Indeed, people use more words referring to sensory features, such as a product's taste and texture, and to reward features, such as a product's satiating or refreshing nature, when describing attractive foods and drinks than when describing unattractive ones (Papies, 2013;Papies et al, 2021).…”