Personality and conditioning with appetitive and aversive stimuli

Impulsivity makes more susceptible to overeating after contextual appetitive conditioning

“…It is possible that impulsivity is related to an increased speed of acquisition of conditioned responding to food cues under certain conditions. For instance, previous findings have suggested that both the size and type of the US may be important for an increased acquisition speed in impulsives: extraverts vs. introverts have been found to show stronger appetitive conditioning of electrodermal responses when stronger, but not when weaker, sexual stimuli were involved (Paisey & Mangan, 1988), and a positive relation between reward responsiveness and speed of acquisition of US expectancies has been reported when a monetary reward was involved but not when an ego-related reward was involved (Zinbarg & Mohlman, 1998). In contrast, in our study, participants received a food reward during conditioning which was relatively weak (i.e., a very small amount of milkshake).…”

“…Other authors have proposed impulsivity to be related to an increased strength (and/ or number) of appetitive associational resources, thereby rendering them predisposed to forming appetitive associations (Zinbarg & Revelle, 1989). However, evidence for the validity of these models is scarce (e.g., Corr et al, 1995;Gupta & Shukla, 1989;Paisey & Mangan, 1988;Zinbarg & Mohlman, 1998). Knowing that impulsivity is positively associated with overeating and obesity, it is of interest to study whether impulsivity predicts a facilitated acquisition of conditioned responding to a CS that signals a food reward and in this way stimulates overeating in especially the high impulsive people.…”

Learned desires

“…However, an appetitive conditioning study conducted in our laboratory examined different aspects of impulsivity and did not find evidence for this (Papachristou et al, 2013). It may also be that the food US (e.g., one spoon of chocolate mousse) used in the studies was too small -for example, a previous study has shown that extraverts (relative to introverts) only show better appetitive conditioning when stronger, but not weaker, sexual USs were used (Paisey & Mangan, 1988). Another possibility is that the relatively simple paradigm that we used minimized chances to detect effects of impulsivity on responding.…”

“…For instance, previous findings have suggested that both the size and type of the US may be important for an increased acquisition speed in impulsives: extraverts vs. introverts have been found to show stronger appetitive conditioning of electrodermal responses when stronger, but not when weaker, sexual stimuli were involved (Paisey & Mangan, 1988), and a positive relation between reward responsiveness and speed of acquisition of US expectancies has been reported when a monetary reward was involved but not when an ego-related reward was involved (Zinbarg & Mohlman, 1998). In contrast, in our study, participants received a food reward during conditioning which was relatively weak (i.e., a very small amount of milkshake).…”

“…Other authors have proposed impulsivity to be related to an increased strength (and/or number) of appetitive associational resources, thereby rendering them predisposed to forming appetitive associations (Zinbarg & Revelle, 1989). However, evidence for the validity of these models is scarce (e.g., Corr, et al, 1995;Gupta & Shukla, 1989;Paisey & Mangan, 1988;Zinbarg & Mohlman, 1998). Knowing that impulsivity is positively associated with overeating and obesity, it is of interest to study whether impulsivity predicts a facilitated acquisition of conditioned responding to a CS that signals a food reward and in this way stimulates overeating in especially the high impulsive people.…”