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Physical activity (PA) produces various outcomes, including affective responses and instrumental benefits (e.g., weight loss, health). Theories of behavioral maintenance suggest that decisions to continue PA engagement will depend on one's satisfaction with received outcomes. Thus, this study was designed to test how different combinations of affective and instrumental outcomes influence motivation, intentions, and subsequent PA behavior over a two-week study period. Participants with weight loss goals (N = 119) were provided an exercise video that was designed to manipulate their affect while exercising (positive vs. neutral) and their beliefs about the video's instrumentality for weight loss (instrumental vs. not). Self-report measures assessed participants' affect while exercising, instrumental beliefs that the video would produce weight loss, and motivation and intention to exercise with the video for two weeks. After two weeks, participants reported their video use. Because initial pre-registered analyses revealed that the video manipulation did not produce a difference in affect, a regression-based approach was implemented to examine whether variability in self-reported affect while exercising and beliefs about the video's effect on weight loss predicted motivation, intentions, and video use during the two-week study period. Reports of more favorable affect were positively associated with motivation and video use, regardless of instrumental beliefs. For those reporting less favorable affect, strong instrumental beliefs appeared to bolster motivation, but had an adverse effect on video use. Findings provide insight into how different types of PA outcomes might influence motivation and continued behavioral engagement.

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Many individuals struggle to regulate their own consumption of food. Beginning with general theories of self-control, we review psychological factors that have been shown to influence the regulation of eating, including those related to particular personality variables, such as external eating, restrained eating, and reward sensitivity, as well as situational constraints, including normative influences, emotions, and calorie deprivation. Strategies for the self-control of eating, including reappraisal, effortful inhibition, and various automatic strategies are also reviewed, along with a discussion of the strengths and limitations of historical and contemporary psychological studies investigating food consumption. Whereas extensive examinations of food preferences and body weight have appeared in the psychological literature, we call for more robust research that prioritizes actual eating as the primary dependent measure.

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Although average body size in the U.S. has increased in recent decades, stigma directed at individuals with higher weight has not diminished. In this study, we explored this phenomenon by investigating the relationship between people's perceived social norms regarding higher weight and their reported levels of weight bias (i.e., anti-fat attitudes). Our predictions for perceived social norms drew on the concepts of intergroup contact and ingroup favoritism, which were also probed in this study. We hypothesized that both greater descriptive norms and more favorable injunctive norms regarding higher weight would be associated with lower reported weight bias. Individuals' quantity and quality of social contact with people with higher weight were also predicted to be associated with lower weight bias. Finally, we predicted that individuals who perceived themselves as heavier would display ingroup favoritism (i.e., report less weight bias). Participants (N = 272) from the United States completed a set of online questionnaires about their perceived social norms, social contact with people with higher weight, and explicit weight bias. We found support for each of these pre-registered predictions (ps < 0.03), and post hoc analyses revealed that quality, but not quantity, of social contact with individuals with higher weight was an important predictor of lower weight bias. Together, these findings provide insight into the social psychology of weight bias and help to lay a theoretical foundation for future efforts to reduce weight stigma.

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Healthcare providers regularly give weight-related advice (e.g., behavioral weight loss counseling) to patients with higher weight (BMI ≥30 kg/m2). The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends this practice on the basis that behavioral weight-related advice can motivate patients to attempt weight loss; however, it is also possible that this advice has adverse consequences (e.g., negative psychological reactions). In this study, we examined people's reported reactions to a recent experience of receiving weight-related advice from a healthcare provider. U.S. adults (N = 189) with higher weight who reported having received weight-related advice completed an online survey via Prolific. They answered questions about their most recent experience of receiving weight-related advice, including the purpose of the visit, characteristics of their provider, and characteristics of the advice itself. They also provided demographic information and indicated their trust in healthcare providers and the healthcare system. 90.5% of participants (n = 171) reported having one of three types of reactions to their provider's weight-related advice. Participants (1) felt motivated to change their behaviors and weight; (2) felt bad or guilty about their behaviors and weight; or (3) felt both motivated to change and bad or guilty. Using chi-square tests of independence and one-way ANOVAs, we examined how various participant characteristics and characteristics of the visit, provider, and advice itself differed across these three groups. We found significant demographic differences across the groups and found that a disproportionate amount of people in the "motivated" group reported having requested the weight-related advice and having had a two-way discussion about weight with their provider. Whereas some people feel motivated after receiving weight-related advice from a healthcare provider, others are left feeling bad about themselves or ambivalent. Understanding these varied reactions may provide insights into how healthcare providers can deliver advice that is motivating without eliciting negative psychological reactions.

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Individuals fail to suppress certain thoughts, especially under conditions that tax cognitive resources. We investigated the impact of modifying psychological reactance pressures on thought suppression attempts. Participants were asked to suppress thoughts of a target item under standard experimental conditions or under conditions designed to lower reactance pressures. In the presence of high cognitive load, weakening associated reactance pressures resulted in greater success at suppression. The results suggest that reducing relevant motivational pressures can facilitate thought suppression, even when an individual experiences cognitive limitation.

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Objective. Weight gain was common during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, potentially creating a new descriptive norm about weight gain. The unique context of a global pandemic may have influenced situational attributions for weight gain that were not typical prior to the pandemic. We examined the effects of the new norm on people's views about responsibility and blame for weight gain.Methods. In two preregistered surveys, we aimed to manipulate the salience of weight gain during COVID-19, and measured views about responsibility and blame for weight gain.Results. Among participants who gained weight, the more common they perceived weight gain to be, the more they felt their own weight gain was understandable (b = 0.09, se = 0.04, p = 0.02), but perceived commonness didn't relate to their feelings of responsibility and blame for weight gain. For participants who didn't gain weight, the perceived commonness of weight gain was associated with less blame towards people who gained weight (b = 0.11, se= 1.46, p = 0.044), but not with responsibility for weight gain.Conclusion. Participants believed weight gain was common during COVID, but this descriptive norm had mixed associations with attributions for one's own and others' weight gain.

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Attention represents a key element of self-control, and multiple theoretical accounts have highlighted the role played by abundant attentional capacity in effecting successful self-regulation. What, then, are the consequences of living in today's world, in which attention can become so easily divided by a multitude of stimuli? In this article, we consider the implications of divided attention for self-control and show that although the end result is typically disinhibited behavior, under specified conditions, attentional limitation, or what we term attentional myopia, can be associated with enhanced restraint.

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OBJECTIVE: Sustained weight loss is difficult to achieve, and weight regain is common due to biological and psychological changes caused by calorie deprivation. These changes are thought to undermine weight loss efforts by making self-control more difficult. However, there is a lack of evidence showing a causal relationship between calorie deprivation and behavioral self-control. DESIGN: In this longitudinal field experiment, we tested whether a ten-day period of calorie deprivation leads to the impairment of behavioral self-control. Participants were randomly assigned to either restrict their calorie intake or to continue eating normally for the study period. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Participants were given a box of food and non-food 'treats' (i.e., chocolates and lottery tickets) that they were asked to resist until the end of the study. On the last day, researchers recorded the number of treats that remained for each participant. RESULTS: Nonparametric permutation tests revealed that calorie-deprived participants ate significantly more chocolates than control participants did (p = 0.036), but that participants did not differ in the number of lottery tickets 'scratched' by condition (p = 0.332). CONCLUSION: This pattern of findings suggests that calorie deprivation impairs food-related self-control, but that this self-control deficit may not generalize beyond food-related tasks.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has extensively changed the state of psychological science from what research questions psychologists can ask to which methodologies psychologists can use to investigate them. In this article, we offer a perspective on how to optimize new research in the pandemic's wake. Because this pandemic is inherently a social phenomenon-an event that hinges on human-to-human contact-we focus on socially relevant subfields of psychology. We highlight specific psychological phenomena that have likely shifted as a result of the pandemic and discuss theoretical, methodological, and practical considerations of conducting research on these phenomena. After this discussion, we evaluate metascientific issues that have been amplified by the pandemic. We aim to demonstrate how theoretically grounded views on the COVID-19 pandemic can help make psychological science stronger-not weaker-in its wake.

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What is the role played by attentional load in eating? Does attending to an unrelated task generally lead to overeating, perhaps by preventing individuals from focusing on a goal to limit consumption? Or does such attentional diversion typically lead to reductions in eating, perhaps by preventing people from noticing tempting features of relevant food cues? Past research has supported each of these two propositions, but comparisons between existing studies have been hampered to the extent that various experimental manipulations differ in the degree to which they occupy attention, as well as differing in the particular type of attentional resources they exploit. To resolve existing discrepancies in the literature, in a series of studies, we made use of a working memory manipulation, the n-back task (Kirchner, 1958), that can be systematically modified to induce varying levels of cognitive load, allowing for rigorous comparisons of the effects of different levels of attentional load on eating. These studies revealed a complex pattern of results. Analysis of findings from three studies employing within-subjects designs documented a linear relationship, in that participants consumed less food when completing a higher cognitive-load task than when completing a lower cognitive-load task. Three studies employing between-subjects designs highlighted a less consistent pattern of results, but when combined in a mini-meta-analysis, suggested the opposite linear relationship, with participants assigned to higher cognitive-load conditions generally consuming more food than participants assigned to lower cognitive-load conditions. We conducted two additional studies to reconcile these conflicting patterns of data. Neither finding received unequivocal support, although both studies found that participants ate less when engaged in higher cognitive-load tasks than lower cognitive-load tasks. The precise nature of the relationship between attentional load and eating remains elusive.

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BACKGROUND: The formation of healthy eating habits is supported by repeatedly eating specific foods, but repetition can also reduce enjoyment of those foods. Making the variety in one's diet salient increases enjoyment of repetitiously consumed foods in a lab setting. Therefore, in a longitudinal field experiment, we tested a brief intervention to remind participants of the variety in their diet. We hypothesized that increasing salience of dietary variety would prevent declines in enjoyment of the food and increase the likelihood that participants would be willing to eat the food again later. METHOD: Participants (n = 139) ate a granola bar each day for 2 weeks. Before eating it, participants randomly assigned to the treatment condition recalled other recently consumed foods (to increase salience of dietary variety). Control subjects recalled variety in an unrelated domain (music). Participants reported their enjoyment of the granola bar after they ate it each day, and in a lab session after the study ended, the number of granola bars they took from a selection of snacks was counted. RESULTS: Self-reported feelings of enjoyment declined steadily, and contrary to our first hypothesis, increasing salience of dietary variety did not prevent this decline. Increasing salience of dietary variety did increase the likelihood that participants would choose to take the same kind of granola bar 2 weeks later. CONCLUSION: Brief exercises that make variety in one's diet more salient may not prevent reductions in enjoyment of a repetitiously consumed food, but may still support continued consumption of the food.

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Consuming coffee without (or with less) sugar may help people lower their daily calorie intake without restrictive dieting. We tested two theory-based interventions to help people do so. One involved gradually reducing sugar over time, and the other was based on mindfulness theory. These interventions were compared to a repeated exposure (to sugar-free coffee) group. Participants in all conditions had significant increases in consumption of sugar-free coffee that lasted 6 months. The mindfulness group had a larger increase than the others. Unexpectedly, the gradual reduction intervention led to a decrease in liking for sugar-free coffee and was the least effective.

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BACKGROUND: Less than 2% of children in the U.S., ages 9-13, meet the minimum dietary recommendations for vegetable intake. The home setting provides potential opportunities to promote dietary behavior change among children, yet limited trials exist with child vegetable intake as a primary outcome. Strategies to increase vegetable intake grounded in behavioral economics are no/low cost and may be easily implemented in the home by parents. METHODS: This non-randomized, controlled study tested whether an intervention of parent-led strategies informed by behavioral economics and implemented within a series of 6 weekly parent-child vegetable cooking skills classes, improved dietary outcomes of a diverse sample of low-income children (ages 9-12) more than the vegetable cooking skills classes alone. The primary outcomes were total vegetable intake, dietary quality (HEI scores), total energy intake, vegetable liking, variety of vegetables tried, child BMI-z score, and home availability of vegetables. Outcome measures were collected at baseline, immediate post-treatment, 6 and 12 months follow-up. Mixed model regression analyses with fixed independent effects (treatment condition, time point and treatment condition x time interaction) were used to compare outcomes between treatment conditions. RESULTS: A total of 103 parent/child pairs (intervention = 49, control = 54) were enrolled and 91 (intervention = 44, control = 47) completed the weekly cooking skills program. The intervention did not improve child total vegetable intake. Intervention children increased dark green vegetable intake from immediate post-treatment to 12 months. The number of vegetables children tried increased and mean vegetable liking decreased over time for both control and intervention children. CONCLUSIONS: Findings from this study suggest that the strategies and the manner in which they were implemented may not be effective in low-income populations. The burden of implementing a number of strategies with potentially higher food costs may have constrained the ability of families in the current study to use the strategies as intended. TRIAL REGISTRATION: This trial has been retrospectively registered at : # NCT03641521 on August 21, 2018.

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OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the impact of a vegetable-focused cooking skills and nutrition program on parent and child psychosocial measures, vegetable liking, variety, and home availability. DESIGN: Baseline and postcourse surveys collected 1-week after the course. SETTING: Low-income communities in Minneapolis-St Paul. PARTICIPANTS: Parent-child dyads (n = 89; one third each Hispanic, African American, and white) with complete pre-post course data; flyer and e-mail recruitment. INTERVENTION(S): Six 2-hour-weekly sessions including demonstration, food preparation, nutrition education lessons, and a meal. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Parental cooking confidence and barriers, food preparation/resource management, child self-efficacy and cooking attitudes, vegetable liking, vegetable variety, and vegetable home availability. ANALYSIS: Pre-post changes analyzed with paired t test or Wilcoxon signed-rank tests. Results were significant at P < .05. RESULTS: Increased parental cooking confidence (4.0 to 4.4/5.0), healthy food preparation (3.6 to 3.9/5.0), child self-efficacy (14.8 to 12.4; lower score = greater self-efficacy), vegetable variety (30 to 32/37 for parent, 22 to 24/37 for child), and home vegetable availability (16 to 18/35) (all P < .05). CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: A short-term evaluation of a vegetable-focused cooking and nutrition program for parents and children showed improvements in psychosocial factors, variety, and home availability.

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People regulate their eating behavior in many ways. They may respond to overeating by compensating with healthy eating behavior or increased exercise (i.e., a sensible tradeoff), or by continuing to eat poorly (i.e., disinhibition). Conversely, people may respond to a healthy eating event by subsequently eating poorly (i.e., self-licensing) or by continuing to eat healthily (i.e., promotion spillover). We propose that people may also change their behaviors in anticipation of an unhealthy eating event, a phenomenon that we will refer to as pre-compensation. Using a survey of 430 attendees of the Minnesota State Fair over two years, we explored whether, when, and how people compensated before and after this tempting eating event. We found evidence that people use both pre-compensatory and post-compensatory strategies, with a preference for changing their eating (rather than exercise) behavior. There was no evidence that people who pre-compensated were more likely to self-license by indulging in a greater number of foods or calories at the fair than those who did not. Finally, people who pre-compensated were more likely to also post-compensate. These results suggest that changing eating or exercise behavior before exposure to a situation with many tempting foods may be a successful strategy for enjoying oneself without excessively overeating.

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OBJECTIVE: To examine the feasibility of implementing nine behavioural economics-informed strategies, or 'nudges', that aimed to encourage home dinner vegetable intake among low-income children. DESIGN: Caregivers were assigned six of nine strategies and implemented one new strategy per week (i.e. 6 weeks) during three dinner meals. Caregivers recorded child dinner vegetable intake on the nights of strategy implementation and rated the level of difficulty for assigned strategies. Baseline data on home vegetable availability and child vegetable liking were collected to assess overall strategy feasibility. SETTING: Participants' homes in a large Midwestern metropolitan area, USA. SUBJECTS: Low-income caregiver/child (aged 9-12 years) dyads (n 39). RESULTS: Pairwise comparisons showed that child dinner vegetable intake for the strategy 'Serve at least two vegetables with dinner meals' was greater than intake for each of two other strategies: 'Pair vegetables with other foods the child likes' and 'Eat dinner together with an adult(s) modelling vegetable consumption'. Overall, caregivers' mean rating of difficulty for implementing strategies was 2·6 (1='not difficult', 10='very difficult'). Households had a mean of ten different types of vegetables available. Children reported a rating ≥5 for seventeen types of vegetable on a labelled hedonic scale (1='hate it', 5-6='it's okay', 10='like it a lot'). CONCLUSIONS: Behavioural economics-informed strategies are feasible to implement during dinner meals, with some strategies differing by how much they influence vegetable intake among low-income children in the home.

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OBJECTIVE: This paper reviews the state of the science on psychological and neural contributions to appetite self-regulation in the context of obesity. METHODS: Three content areas (neural systems and cognitive functions; parenting and early childhood development; and goal setting and goal striving) served to illustrate different perspectives on the psychological and neural factors that contribute to appetite dysregulation in the context of obesity. Talks were initially delivered at an NIH workshop consisting of experts in these three content areas, and then content areas were further developed through a review of the literature. RESULTS: Self-regulation of appetite involves a complex interaction between multiple domains, including cognitive, neural, social, and goal-directed behaviors and decision-making. Self-regulation failures can arise from any of these factors, and the resulting implications for obesity should be considered in light of each domain. In some cases, self-regulation is amenable to intervention; however, this does not appear to be universally true, which has implications for both prevention and intervention efforts. CONCLUSIONS: Appetite regulation is a complex, multifactorial construct. When considering its role in the obesity epidemic, it is advisable to consider its various dimensions together to best inform prevention and treatment efforts.

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In the battle to combat obesity rates in the United States, several misconceptions have dominated policy initiatives. We address those misconceptions, including the notion that restrictive diets lead to long-term weight loss, that stigmatizing obesity is an effective strategy for promoting weight reduction, and that weight and physical health should be considered synonymous with one another. In offering correctives to each of these points, we draw on psychological science to suggest new policies that could be enacted at both the local and national levels. Instead of policies that rely solely on individual willpower, which is susceptible to failure, we recommend those that make use of environmental changes to reduce the amount of willpower necessary to achieve healthy behavior. Ultimately, the most effective policies will promote health rather than any arbitrary level of weight.

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