Discrepancy between implicit and explicit preferences for food portions in obesity

We investigated the implicit preference in terms of food portion in obesity using the affective priming paradigm. Primes representing different portions of fast food (small, medium and large) were used to assess participants’ readiness to respond to a positive or negative target word. A self-reporte...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International Journal of Obesity 2016-09, Vol.40 (9), p.1464-1467
Main Authors: Cserjesi, R, De Vos, I, Deroost, N
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
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Adult
Analysis of Variance
Body mass index
Choice Behavior
Convenience foods
Diet
Epidemiology
Fast food
Female
Food
Food preferences
Food Preferences - psychology
Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
Humans
Internal Medicine
Likert scale
Male
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Metabolic Diseases
Obesity
Obesity - psychology
Portion Size - psychology
Preferences
Priming
Psychological Theory
Psychologists
Public Health
Self report
short-communication
Social desirability
Software
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Summary:We investigated the implicit preference in terms of food portion in obesity using the affective priming paradigm. Primes representing different portions of fast food (small, medium and large) were used to assess participants’ readiness to respond to a positive or negative target word. A self-reported affective rating scale of food portion and a portion judgment task were administered to determine the explicit preference for food portion and portion misperception, respectively. The results of the affective priming paradigm showed an implicit preference for large food portions in the obese group. No implicit preference in terms of food portion was found in the non-obese group. The explicit preference measure of food portion demonstrated a rather negative attitude for large portions in the obese group, whereas the non-obese group reported no explicit preference in terms of food portion. Thus, unlike the non-obese group, the obese group showed clear discrepancies between implicit and explicit preferences in terms of food portion: obese participants demonstrated an implicit, but not an explicit preference for large food portions. These results could not be attributed to a misperception of food portion, as revealed by the portion judgment task. The current findings suggest that social desirability might conceal self-reported preference in terms of food portion and/or that obese individuals are less aware of their internal preferences.
ISSN:0307-0565
1476-5497
DOI:10.1038/ijo.2016.91