Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3UD, UK.
Department of Business Administration & MAPP, Aarhus University, Bartholins Allé 10, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark.
Appetite. 2014 Jul;78:193-202. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2014.03.029. Epub 2014 Apr 4.
Wanting and rejecting food are natural reactions that we humans all experience, often unconsciously, on a daily basis. However, in the food domain, the focus to date has primarily been on the approach tendency, and researchers have tended not to study the two opposing tendencies in a balanced manner. Here, we develop a methodology with which to understand people's implicit and explicit reactions to both positive (appealing) and negative (disgusting) foods. It consists of a combination of direct and indirect computer-based tasks, as well as a validated food image stimulus set, specifically designed to investigate motivational approach and avoidance responses towards foods. Fifty non-dieting participants varying in terms of their hunger state (hungry vs. not hungry) reported their explicit evaluations of pleasantness, wanting, and disgust towards the idea of tasting each of the food images that were shown. Their motivational tendencies towards those food items were assessed indirectly using a joystick-based approach-avoidance procedure. For each of the food images that were presented, the participants had to move the joystick either towards or away from themselves (approach and avoidance movements, respectively) according to some unrelated instructions, while their reaction times were recorded. Our findings demonstrated the hypothesised approach-avoidance compatibility effect: a significant interaction of food valence and direction of movement. Furthermore, differences between the experimental groups were observed. The participants in the no-hunger group performed avoidance (vs. approach) movements significantly faster; and their approach movements towards positive (vs. negative) foods were significantly faster. As expected, the self-report measures revealed a strong effect of the food category on the three dependent variables and a strong main effect of the hunger state on wanting and to a lesser extent on pleasantness.
想要和拒绝食物是我们人类每天都会经历的自然反应，通常是无意识的。然而，在食品领域，迄今为止的重点主要是接近倾向，研究人员往往没有以平衡的方式研究这两种相反的倾向。在这里，我们开发了一种方法来理解人们对正面（诱人）和负面（恶心）食物的隐含和显式反应。它由直接和间接的基于计算机的任务以及经过验证的食物图像刺激集组成，专门用于研究对食物的动机接近和回避反应。五十名非节食参与者根据饥饿状态（饥饿与不饥饿）的不同，报告了他们对品尝每个食物图像的愉快度、想要度和厌恶度的显式评价。他们对这些食物的动机倾向通过基于操纵杆的接近回避程序进行间接评估。对于呈现的每一个食物图像，参与者根据一些不相关的指令将操纵杆向自己或远离自己移动（分别是接近和回避动作），同时记录他们的反应时间。我们的研究结果表明了假设的接近回避兼容性效应：食物效价和运动方向之间存在显著的交互作用。此外，还观察到实验组之间的差异。不饥饿组的参与者进行回避（相对于接近）运动的速度明显更快；他们对正面（相对于负面）食物的接近运动速度明显更快。正如预期的那样，自我报告测量结果显示食物类别对三个因变量有很强的影响，饥饿状态对想要度和愉悦度有很强的影响，对愉悦度的影响较小。
