Does competition affect moral behavior? This fundamental question has been debated among leading scholars for centuries, and more recently, it has been tested in experimental studies yielding a body of rather inconclusive empirical evidence.
Many of the key problems humans are facing today result from desires, habits, and social norms impeding behaviour change. Here, we apply a grounded cognition perspective to these phenomena, suggesting that simulating the consequences of one’s actions plays a key role in them.
How do people cognitively represent appetitive stimuli? Do interactions with appetitive stimuli shape how we think about them, and do such representations affect motivation to consume? Although much is known about how people respond to appetitive stimuli, little is known about how they are represented.
Many people consume too much sugar from sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and would benefit from drinking water instead. Previous research has shown that taste and reward expectations play a key role in food and drink choices, and that thinking about drinks in terms of consuming and enjoying them (i.
Research suggests that being oriented more towards the future (than the present) is correlated with healthier eating. However, this research tends to be correlational, and thus it is unclear whether inducing people to think about their future could increase healthy eating.
A negative association between socioeconomic status (SES) and levels of overweight/obesity is consistently found in high- and middle-income countries. Yet, there is little conclusive evidence about the mechanisms driving this association.
Rising obesity represents a serious, global problem. It is now well established that obesity is associated with poverty and wealth inequality, suggesting that these factors may promote caloric intake. Whereas previous work has examined these links from an epidemiological perspective, the current paper examined them experimentally.