Sweet lies: Neural, visual, and behavioral measures reveal a lack of self-control conflict during food choice in weight-concerned women
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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.
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Self-reports of weight-concerns and restraint are reflective of intentions and wishes to restrict intake, rather than of actual eating behavior.
“van der Laan et al. (2014) found that weightconcerned women primarily based their food choices on taste considerations rather than on energy content, which suggests that “self-reports of weight-concerns and restraint are reflective of intentions and wishes to restrict intake, rather than of actual eating behavior” (p. 7).”
From Relationships between functional food consumption and individual traits and values: A segmentation approach (2021) · cites this paper as van der Laan et al. (2014)
Weight-concerned women primarily base their food choices on taste considerations rather than on energy content.
“van der Laan et al. (2014) found that weightconcerned women primarily based their food choices on taste considerations rather than on energy content, which suggests that “self-reports of weight-concerns and restraint are reflective of intentions and wishes to restrict intake, rather than of actual eating behavior” (p. 7).”
From Relationships between functional food consumption and individual traits and values: A segmentation approach (2021) · cites this paper as van der Laan et al. (2014)
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Nystrand, B. T., & Olsen, S. O. (2021) · Journal of Functional Foods · doi:10.1016/j.jff.2021.104736 · Cited by 28 · see citing works
- Authors
- van der Laan, L. N., de Ridder, D. T. D., Charbonnier, L., Viergever, M. A., & Smeets, P. A. M.
- Affiliations
- University Medical Center Utrecht (NL)
- Venue
- Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2014-05-22
- Volume
- 8
- Pages
- 184-184
- ISSN
- 1662-5153 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4033222
- OpenAlex
- W2163174252
- Cited by
- 39
- References
- 71
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 2
- FWCI
- 5.11
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Socio-Environmental Systems Modeling (acceptedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Utrecht University Repository (Utrecht University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- European Commission (2007–2013, FP7 2007-2013, FP7/2007, 266408, Full4Health)
- Agentschap NL (FND08009)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Eating Disorders and Behaviors
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Behavioral Health and Interventions
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Keywords
- self-control, food choice, weight concern, weight maintenance, conflict detection, anterior cingulate cortex, dietary habits, women, self-control failure
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