Humans have a fascination with quantifying behaviors. While numbers can provide intriguing insights, they can also distort public perceptions and misguide policy design. This article deconstructs the popular belief that individuals make 200 mindless food-related decisions a day, offering alternative perspectives on the conceptualization and measurement of food decisions.
Background Despite its numerous health benefits, consumers’ daily water consumption is below recommend levels while soft drink consumption remains high. Previous research has shown that the degree to which drinks are cognitively represented in terms of consumption and enjoyment (i.
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.
We examined the impact of a COVID-19 lockdown in England on the frequency of consumption occasions and amount of soft drinks consumed. Beverage consumption is strongly associated with specific, often social, consumption situations (e.
Social information, such as norms, influences behavior. Descriptive norms can be used to guide behavior toward healthier choices. Here, we examined the effect of a descriptive norm on the choice between two similar products (vegetables or fruits).
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.