Hunger inhibits negative associations to food but not auditory biases in attention

Abstract

Motivational state has been found to influence visual attentional bias and evaluation of food-related stimuli. The study here aimed to extend this research to investigate whether such biases are also evident in the auditory domain and whether motivational state is associated with changes in the implicit evaluation of food words. Thirty participants, randomly allocated to a pre-lunch or post-lunch condition completed a dichotic listening task (DLT) and implicit association test (IAT). For the IAT, participants in the pre-lunch group were slower to associate food with unpleasant words than the post-lunch group, but motivational state did not affect detection of food words in the DLT. These findings suggest that implicit attitudes toward food can vary with motivational state.