Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Dec 27;16(1):89.
doi: 10.3390/nu16010089.

Focusing on Future Consequences Enhances Self-Controlled Dietary Choices

Johanna Kruse  1 , Franziska M Korb  1 , Caroline Surrey  1 , Uta Wolfensteller  1 , Thomas Goschke  1 , Stefan Scherbaum  1
Affiliations

Focusing on Future Consequences Enhances Self-Controlled Dietary Choices

Johanna Kruse et al. Nutrients. .

Abstract

Self-controlled dietary decisions, i.e., choosing a healthier food over a tastier one, are a major challenge for many people. Despite the potential profound consequences of frequent poor choices, maintaining a healthy diet proves challenging. This raises the question of how to facilitate self-controlled food decisions to promote healthier choices. The present study compared the influence of implicit and explicit information on food choices and their underlying decision processes. Participants watched two video clips as an implicit manipulation to induce different mindsets. Instructions to focus on either the short-term or long-term consequences of choices served as an explicit manipulation. Participants performed a binary food choice task, including foods with different health and taste values. The choice was made using a computer mouse, whose trajectories we used to calculate the influence of the food properties. Instruction to focus on long-term consequences compared to short-term consequences increased the number of healthy choices, reduced response times for healthy decisions, and increased the influence of health aspects during the decision-making process. The effect of video manipulation showed greater variability. While focusing on long-term consequences facilitated healthy food choices and reduced the underlying decision conflict, the current mindset appeared to have a minor influence.

Keywords: decision making; food choice; mouse tracking; process tracing; self-control.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The funders had no role in the design of this study, in the collection, analysis, or interpretation of data, in the writing of this manuscript, or in the decision to publish this results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Examples of mouse movements during one trial. The dotted line shows an example of a mouse movement, where one first tends to choose the ice cream and only later decides in favor of the apple. The dash-dotted line is an example of a mouse movement in which the apple is selected directly.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Stages of trial presentation during the decision task. After cue presentation (1), participants had to click in the start box at the bottom center of the screen (2) and move upwards at least 50 pixels (dashed line) (3) to start stimulus presentation (4). Participants had up to 2.5 s to decide on one of the two food items.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Food item categories. Each item was post-hoc categorized as either “Tasty” (less healthy and tasty), “Both” (healthy and tasty), “Neither” (less healthy and less tasty), “Healthy” (healthy and less tasty), or “Neutral” (neutral in both healthy and tasty). One neutral item was chosen as a reference item.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Percentage of healthy choices following short-term vs. long-term instructions after watching food-related (nutrition) or unrelated (migraine) videos. When focusing on long-term consequences, significantly more healthy choices were made in the nutrition video-block compared to the migraine video-block. Error bars display standard errors.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Response times for both videos (nutrition and migraine) while focusing on the short-term vs. long-term consequences. For short-term instructions, smaller response times were found for unhealthy choices (as compared to healthy choices). For long-term instructions, smaller response times were found for healthy choices (as compared to unhealthy choices). The difference between healthy and unhealthy choices was bigger for short-term instructions compared to long-term instructions. This pattern was found for both videos. Error bars display standard errors.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Stimulus-locked time-continuous beta-weights from time-continuous multiple regression of Experiment 1 for all four manipulation combinations. The lines above the graphs mark significant segments determined by t-tests against zero. Significant differences between both predictors were found for short-term instructions in both videos.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Stages of trial presentation during the decision task. Participants had to click in the start box at the bottom center of the screen (1) and move upwards at least 50 pixels (dashed line) (2) to start the stimulus presentation (3). The cues appeared after 100 ms (4). Participants had up to 2.5 s to decide on one of the two food items.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Percentage of healthy choices following short-term vs. long-term instructions after watching food-related (nutrition) or unrelated (migraine) videos.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Response times for both videos (nutrition and migraine) while focusing on the short-term vs. long-term consequences. With regard to the nutrition video, smaller response times were found for short-term instructions and unhealthy choices (as compared to healthy choices). Long-term instructions were found to have shorter reaction times for healthy decisions (compared to unhealthy decisions). The difference between healthy and unhealthy choices was bigger for short-term instructions compared to long-term instructions. No significant effects were found for the migraine video. Error bars display standard errors.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Stimulus-locked time-continuous beta-weights from time-continuous multiple regression of Experiment 2 for all four manipulation combinations The lines above the graphs mark significant segments determined by t-tests against zero. Significant differences between both predictors were found for short-term instructions in both videos.
Figure 11
Figure 11
Comparison of beta weights of health differences between experiments, with blocked cue presentation in Experiment 1 and random cue presentation in Experiment 2. The lines above the graphs mark significant segments determined by t-tests against zero.
Figure 12
Figure 12
Comparison of beta weights of taste differences between experiments, with blocked cue presentation in Experiment 1 and random cue presentation in Experiment 2.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

    1. Ainslie G. Specious Reward: A Behavioral Theory of Impulsiveness and Impulse Control. Psychol. Bull. 1975;82:463–496. doi: 10.1037/h0076860. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Mischel W., Shoda Y., Rodriguez M.L. Delay of Gratification in Children. Science. 1989;244:933–938. doi: 10.1126/science.2658056. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Kirby K.N., Herrnstein R.J. Preference Reversals Due to Myopic Discounting of Delayed Reward. Psychol. Sci. 1995;6:83–89. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.1995.tb00311.x. - DOI
    1. Guh D.P., Zhang W., Bansback N., Amarsi Z., Birmingham C.L., Anis A.H. The Incidence of Co-Morbidities Related to Obesity and Overweight: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. BMC Public Health. 2009;9:88. doi: 10.1186/1471-2458-9-88. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Tremmel M., Gerdtham U.G., Nilsson P.M., Saha S. Economic Burden of Obesity: A Systematic Literature Review. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health. 2017;14:435. doi: 10.3390/ijerph14040435. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources