School of Psychology, Faculty of Health Sciences and Wellbeing, University of Sunderland, Sunderland, UK.
School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK.
Appetite. 2020 Jun 1;149:104617. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2020.104617. Epub 2020 Feb 4.
Previous studies have shown that humans show an implicit approach bias toward food related items which is moderated by hunger and properties of the food items displayed (such as their palatability and calorie content). However, little is known about if and how this approach bias is moderated by food preferences and/or diet choices. In this study, we compared approach-avoidance biases in a group of young female omnivore and vegetarian eaters towards images of vegetarian and non-vegetarian food items using a manikin stimulus-response compatibility task. While vegetarian eaters showed a slightly larger approach bias for vegetarian than for non-vegetarian food stimuli, this bias was of similar size to that observed in the omnivorous group. Most interestingly, vegetarian eaters' approach bias towards non-vegetarian food pictures also did not differ from that of the omnivorous group, despite vegetarians rating those pictures as much less pleasant. Our findings suggest that approach biases towards food items are quite robust and do not rapidly change with dietary practice. However, despite approach biases often guiding behaviour, vegetarian eaters successfully withstand these implicit action tendencies and avoid non-vegetarian produce. Potential implications of this finding for the addiction literature are discussed.
先前的研究表明，人类对与食物相关的物品表现出内隐的趋近偏向，这种偏向受到饥饿和所呈现的食物物品的特性（如美味和卡路里含量）的调节。然而，对于这种趋近偏向是否以及如何受到食物偏好和/或饮食选择的调节，我们知之甚少。在这项研究中，我们使用人体模型刺激反应相容性任务，比较了一组年轻女性杂食者和素食者对素食和非素食食物图像的趋近-回避偏见。虽然素食者对素食食物刺激的趋近偏向略大于对非素食食物刺激的趋近偏向，但这种偏向与杂食者群体观察到的偏向大小相似。最有趣的是，素食者对非素食食物图片的趋近偏向也与杂食者群体没有差异，尽管素食者认为这些图片的愉悦感要低得多。我们的发现表明，对食物的趋近偏向相当稳定，不会随着饮食实践的改变而迅速改变。然而，尽管趋近偏向通常会引导行为，但素食者成功地抵抗了这些内隐的行为倾向，避免食用非素食产品。我们讨论了这一发现对成瘾文献的潜在影响。
