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Three ways to resist temptation: The independent contributions of executive attention, inhibitory control, and affect regulation to the impulse control of eating behavior

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2008.09.013Get rights and content

Abstract

It is generally assumed that impulse control plays a major role in many areas of self-regulation such as eating behavior. However, the exact mechanisms that enable the control of impulsive determinants such as automatic affective reactions toward tempting stimuli are not well understood. “The present research investigated the separate moderator effects of three factors of impulse control, executive attention, inhibitory control, and affect regulation on the relationship between automatic affective reactions toward candy and subsequent candy consumption.” Results showed that all three factors reduced the influence of automatic affective reactions on eating behavior, indicating improved impulse control. Implications for self-regulation research are discussed.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 122 female participants from the University of Würzburg, Germany, with a mean age of 23 years and a mean body mass index (BMI) of 22.24. Participants were recruited via Internet and newspaper advertisements and compensated for participation (approx. $5). Four participants failed to perform some of the experimental tasks satisfactorily (see below). Thus, the final sample consisted of 118 participants.

Automatic affective reactions

We assessed participants’ automatic affective reactions toward peanut m&m’s

Results

Because candy consumption was positively skewed (s = 1.09), we applied a log-transformation to achieve homogeneity of variance (Hofmann et al., 2007, Vohs and Heatherton, 2000). All statistical analyses were done using the transformed data. For ease of interpretation, however, mean values are reported in untransformed grams of candy consumption. As can be seen from Table 1, both automatic affective reactions and explicit liking were positively associated with candy consumption.

Discussion

The present findings are the first to show the independent contribution of executive attention, inhibitory control, and affect regulation on the control of impulsive determinants of eating behavior (i.e., automatic affective reactions). Specifically, automatic affective reactions toward m&m’s candy had a weaker influence on subsequently assessed candy consumption for individuals above-average (as compared to below-average) in executive attention, inhibitory control, and affect regulation.

References (24)

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    The self-regulation of eating

  • W. Hofmann et al.

    Impulses got the better of me: Alcohol moderates the influence of implicit attitudes toward food cues on eating behavior

    Journal of Abnormal Psychology

    (2008)
  • Cited by (0)

    We thank Julia Archut and Simone Gruß for their help in data collection.

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