van der Laan Laura N, de Ridder Denise T D, Charbonnier Lisette, Viergever Max A, Smeets Paul A M
Image Sciences Institute, University Medical Center Utrecht Utrecht, Netherlands.
Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, Utrecht University Utrecht, Netherlands.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2014 May 22;8:184. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00184. eCollection 2014.
Despite their intentions, weight-concerned individuals generally fail to control their eating behavior. However, it is unknown whether this failure is due to a lack of effortful self-control, or to not experiencing an internal conflict between weight goals and food temptations. The present study used fMRI, eye tracking and reaction times to assess the degree of conflict experienced by weight-concerned women during food choices that posed either a self-control dilemma (i.e., requiring a choice between healthy and palatable foods), or not. Contrary to the common assumption in self-control theory that food choices posing a self-control dilemma evoke internal conflict, we found that choices requiring self-control induced no conflict, as demonstrated by lower reaction times, fixation durations, number of gaze switches between snacks, and lower activation of the anterior cingulate cortex. Our results suggest that self-control failure might be due to a lack of experienced conflict, rather than to failing to act upon the perception of such conflict. This implies that effectiveness of weight maintenance interventions might be improved if they also focus on increasing the ability to detect a self-control dilemma, in addition to the current focus on increasing self-regulatory capacity.
尽管有这样的意图，但关注体重的人通常无法控制自己的饮食行为。然而，尚不清楚这种失败是由于缺乏努力的自我控制，还是由于没有经历体重目标与食物诱惑之间的内心冲突。本研究使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）、眼动追踪和反应时间来评估关注体重的女性在面临自我控制困境（即需要在健康食品和美味食品之间做出选择）或未面临这种困境的食物选择过程中所经历的冲突程度。与自我控制理论中的常见假设相反，即认为构成自我控制困境的食物选择会引发内心冲突，我们发现需要自我控制的选择并未引发冲突，这表现为反应时间更短、注视持续时间更短、在零食之间的目光切换次数更少以及前扣带回皮层的激活程度更低。我们的研究结果表明，自我控制失败可能是由于缺乏经历过的冲突，而不是未能对这种冲突的感知采取行动。这意味着，如果体重维持干预措施除了当前关注提高自我调节能力之外，还注重提高察觉自我控制困境的能力，那么其效果可能会得到改善。
