Reduce temptation or resist it? Experienced temptation mediates the relationship between implicit evaluations of unhealthy snack foods and subsequent intake

Abstract

Please cite this article as: Haynes, A., Kemps, E., Moffitt, R., and Mohr, P., 2015. Reduce temptation or resist it? Experienced temptation mediates the relationship between implicit evaluations of unhealthy snack foods and subsequent intake. Psychology & Health, 30(5) AbstractA more negative implicit evaluation of unhealthy food stimuli and a more positive implicit evaluation of a weight-management goal have been shown to predict lower consumption of unhealthy food. However, the associations between these evaluations, temptation to indulge, and consumption of unhealthy food remain unclear. The current study investigated whether temptation would mediate the relationship between implicit food and goal evaluations and consumption (resembling an antecedent-focused route to self-control of eating), or whether those evaluations would moderate the relationship between temptation and consumption (resembling a response-focused route). A sample of 156 women (17-25 years) who tried to manage their weight through healthy eating completed two implicit association tasks assessing implicit food and goal evaluations, respectively. Intake of four energy-dense snack foods was measured in a task disguised as a taste-test, and participants reported the strength of experienced temptation to indulge in the snacks offered. Negative implicit food evaluation was associated with lower snack intake, and temptation mediated this relationship. Implicit goal evaluation was unrelated to both temptation strength and snack consumption. The findings contribute to an understanding of how negative implicit unhealthy food evaluation relates to lower consumption, namely through the mediation of temptation to indulge in those foods.

The moderating role of state inhibitory control in the effect of evaluative conditioning on temptation and unhealthy snacking

“…Specifically, we expected that only individuals with low state inhibitory control would show significant effects of retraining on snack consumption, as those individuals are purported to lack the resources to inhibit the influence of impulses on behaviour [36]. In line with previous research supporting the mediation of the relationship between implicit food evaluations and intake by experienced temptation [31], we further expected that the effect of evaluative conditioning on intake would be mediated by the experienced temptation to indulge in unhealthy food.…”

“…When considered in conjunction with the empirical evidence and theory suggesting that desire to pursue or consume stimuli is related to the extent to which those stimuli are associated with positive affect (e.g., [8,9,31,38]), this finding suggests that an intervention that trains associations between unhealthy food and negative concepts may reduce the experienced temptation to indulge in these snacks.…”

“…The food words were chocolate, cake, ice-cream, chips, pizza, and hamburger, similar to those used in previous studies (e.g., [21,31,60,62]). Neutral words included cube, rectangle, square, triangle, circle, and hexagon.…”

“…Given that implicit food evaluations and temptation are correlated, and that implicit food evaluations have previously been found to be no less resistant to change among individuals with high rather than low trait inhibitory self-control [30,31], we predicted that evaluative conditioning would affect temptation across the sample. However, we expected that evaluative conditioning effects on intake would vary by situational levels of inhibitory control.…”

“…To test this, Haynes, Kemps, Moffit and Mohr [31] assessed implicit evaluations of unhealthy food, and presented participants with a selection of unhealthy snack foods in a taste-test aimed at surreptitiously assessing snack consumption. Participants were also asked to report the extent to which they felt tempted to eat the foods presented.…”