Abstract
It is often believed that attentional bias (AB) for food is a stable trait of certain groups, like restrained eaters. However, empirical evidence from this domain is inconsistent. High-calorie foods are double-faceted, as they are both a source of reward and of weight/health concern. Their meaning might depend on the food-related context (i.e., focus on health or on enjoyment), which in turn could affect AB for food. This study primed 85 females with hedonic, healthy, and neutral contexts successively and examined whether food-related context affected AB for food and if effects were moderated by dietary restraint. Both the mean tendencies of AB for food and variability of AB for food were assessed in a food dot-probe task with a recording of both reaction times and eye movements. Contrary to our hypotheses, AB for food was not significantly affected by either context or the interaction between context and dietary restraint. Instead, liking of the presented food stimuli was related to longer initial fixations and longer dwell time on the food stimuli. In addition, in line with prior research, body mass index (BMI) was correlated with variability of AB for food instead of mean AB for food. In conclusion, this study did not find any support that AB for food is dependent on food-related context, but interestingly, reaction time-based variability of AB for food seems to relate to BMI, and eye movement-based mean AB seems to relate to appetitive motivation.
Highlights
People are naturally attracted by high-calorie foods (e.g., McSorley et al, 2017)
Data were analyzed in a repeated-measures ANOVA with priming condition as the factor and scores on the manipulation check question “how much would you like to indulge in tasty food after viewing the above video” as the dependent variable
The present study assessed the effect of context on attentional bias (AB) for food
Summary
People are naturally attracted by high-calorie foods (e.g., McSorley et al, 2017). In the Western food-rich environment, the abundant presence of high-calorie palatable foods represents salient cues that can induce food craving (Hill and Peters, 1998), subsequent food intake, and weight gain (Boswell and Kober, 2016). In daily life, there are moments that weight control thoughts or weight/health-related cues can lead to food avoidance. High-calorie foods are frequently craved but are often a source of worry and weight concern. This is referred to as the double-facetted nature of food (Roefs et al, 2018), in other words, a conflict between food enjoyment and weight concern. The current study investigates if inducing a hedonic vs. a health context affects attentional bias (AB) for food and if this effect is moderated by dietary restraint
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