Thought for Food: Imagined Consumption Reduces Actual Consumption

The consumption of a food typically leads to a decrease in its subsequent intake through habituation--a decrease in one's responsiveness to the food and motivation to obtain it. We demonstrated that habituation to a food item can occur even when its consumption is merely imagined. Five experime...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inScience (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 330; no. 6010; pp. 1530 - 1533
Main Authors Morewedge, Carey K, Huh, Young Eun, Vosgerau, Joachim
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Washington, DC American Association for the Advancement of Science 10.12.2010
The American Association for the Advancement of Science
Subjects
Adult
Analysis of Variance
Appetite
Behavioral psychology
Biological and medical sciences
Candy
Cheddar cheese
Cheese
Cheeses
Cognition & reasoning
Cognition. Intelligence
Consumption
Cubes
Eating
Feeding Behavior
Female
Food
Food consumption
Food intake
Food Preferences
Foods
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Good samaritans
Habituation
Habituation, Psychophysiologic
Humans
Imagination
Intakes
Male
Mental imagery
Mental imagery. Mental representation
Mental stimulation
Motivation
Psychological reinforcement
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reinforcement (Psychology)
Representations
Young Adult
Human
Mental imagery
Mental representation
Food intake
Imagination
Cognition
Experimental study
Feeding
Food
Habituation
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Summary:The consumption of a food typically leads to a decrease in its subsequent intake through habituation--a decrease in one's responsiveness to the food and motivation to obtain it. We demonstrated that habituation to a food item can occur even when its consumption is merely imagined. Five experiments showed that people who repeatedly imagined eating a food (such as cheese) many times subsequently consumed less of the imagined food than did people who repeatedly imagined eating that food fewer times, imagined eating a different food (such as candy), or did not imagine eating a food. They did so because they desired to eat it less, not because they considered it less palatable. These results suggest that mental representation alone can engender habituation to a stimulus.
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ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.1195701