Biomedical subjects

Janet Polivy

Publications and source records attributed to Janet Polivy.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Consumption stereotypes and impression management: how you are what you eat.

Consumption stereotypes refer to judgments about others based on their food intake. We review the empirical research on stereotypes based on what and how much people eat. The characteristics stereotypically associated with food intake pertain to domains ranging from gender roles and social appeal to health and weight. For example, people who eat "healthy" foods and smaller meals are seen as more feminine; conversely, those who eat "unhealthy" foods and larger meals are seen as more masculine. We further discuss how these stereotypes can be exploited by the eater to convey a particular impression (e.g., femininity, social appeal). Finally, we discuss the ways in which using food intake as an impression-management tactic can lead to chronic food restriction and unhealthy eating habits.

Body Weight↗

PubMed2006

Selective carbohydrate or protein restriction: effects on subsequent food intake and cravings.

In order to determine the effects of selective food restriction on subsequent food intake and cravings, participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: carbohydrate-restriction, protein-restriction, or control (no restriction). Participants in the restriction conditions were asked to restrict their intake of either complex carbohydrates or animal proteins for 3 days, before coming to the laboratory for an experimental session. During the experimental session, participants' food intake, cravings, and affect were measured. The results indicated that selective food restriction resulted in selective behavioural consequences. Specifically, carbohydrate-restricted participants consumed more of a high-carbohydrate food than did controls or protein-restrictors, in addition to reporting more cravings for high-carbohydrate foods over the restriction period. Protein-restricted participants reported more cravings for high-protein foods over the restriction period, in comparison to controls and carbohydrate-restrictors; however, protein-restricted participants did not consume more of the particular high-protein food presented to them in the laboratory. The roles of dietary restraint and negative affect in influencing cravings and food intake are discussed. Overall, selective food restriction is demonstrated to have negative psychological and behavioural consequences.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

An evolutionary perspective on dieting.

We examine the principal features of dieting using an evolutionary perspective, which sheds light on certain anomalies while raising other interesting questions. We focus on (a) the reasons that dieters give for dieting, (b) the difficulty of dieting, and (c) the apparent opposition between the proclivities toward self-indulgence and self-control. We propose that while self-indulgence and self-control both serve adaptive functions, these evolved tendencies are naturally triggered by different ecological challenges. Implications for dieting in an ecology of plenty are explored.

Diet, Reducing↗

PubMed2005

Does regulatory focus play a role in dietary restraint?

Regulatory-Focus Theory [Higgins, E. T. (1997). Beyond pleasure and pain. American Psychologist, 52, 1280-1300.] distinguishes between self-regulation with a promotion focus (focusing on the presence and absence of positive outcomes) and a prevention focus (focusing on the presence and absence of negative outcomes). We examined whether regulatory-focus theory can help us to better understand the weight-related beliefs and dieting behaviors of restrained eaters. In two studies, participants completed measures of dietary restraint, regulatory focus, beliefs about the outcomes associated with weight loss and weight gain, and dieting behaviors. Overall, restrained eaters were more self-regulatory than were unrestrained eaters. Across both studies, dietary restraint was the best predictor of weight-related beliefs and dieting behaviors; in contrast, regulatory focus was largely unrelated to beliefs and behaviors. In addition, restrained eaters were highly motivated to control their weight irrespective of how close or how far they were from their ideal weight, whereas unrestrained eaters were more motivated to control their weight when they were further from their ideal. Our results suggest that future research should focus on the obstacles to successful weight regulation, rather than on individuals' regulatory focus.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Normative influences on food intake.

Hunger and satiety have conventionally provided the framework for understanding eating and overeating. We argue that hunger and satiety play a relatively small role in everyday eating. The normative control of food intake refers to the fact that our eating is largely governed by the motive to avoid eating excessively. Dieters impose a restrictive intake norm on themselves, but often violate the norm. Personal norms are individualized rules that people develop to help themselves decide how much is appropriate to eat in a given situation. Situational norms are derived from the eating situation itself; examples include portion size and social influence, which exert powerful effects on intake. We discuss the implications of a normative approach to the analysis of eating and overeating.

Diet↗

PubMed2005

Effects of exposure to unrealistic promises about dieting: are unrealistic expectations about dieting inspirational?

OBJECTIVE: The false-hope syndrome suggests that unrealistic expectations about dieting set dieters up for failure and then promote renewed efforts at weight loss. Many dieters believe the inflated promises typical of diet advertisements, which may be the source of at least some of their unrealistic expectations. Diet advertisements promoting unrealistic expectations were expected to inspire restrained eaters to diet and lead to enhanced self-perceptions, relative to more circumspect advertisements. METHOD: Female undergraduates rated their expectations in response to a control advertisement or to advertisements containing realistic, moderately unrealistic, or highly unrealistic promises of dieting. Participants then rated their self-perceptions and participated in an apparent "taste-test". RESULTS: Restrained eaters had higher expectations for themselves than did unrestrained eaters, and restrained and unrestrained eaters had similar expectations concerning dieting for others. Those who viewed the advertisements containing unrealistic expectations ate fewer cookies ad libitum than did those who viewed the realistic or control advertisements. DISCUSSION: This finding is consistent with the suggestion that unrealistic expectations contribute to the decision to change oneself.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

The effect of deprivation on food cravings and eating behavior in restrained and unrestrained eaters.

OBJECTIVE: The relation between being deprived of a food and intake and craving for that food was investigated in restrained and unrestrained eaters. METHOD: For 1 week, 103 female undergraduate students were assigned to be chocolate deprived, vanilla deprived, or nondeprived. Only chocolate deprivation was expected to elicit cravings, as chocolate is not easily substituted, whereas vanilla is. RESULTS: The main effect of chocolate deprivation on consumption was qualified by an interaction with restraint. Chocolate-deprived restrained eaters consumed more chocolate food than did any other group. Restrained eaters experienced more food cravings than did unrestrained eaters and were more likely to eat the craved food. Moreover, restrained eaters deprived of chocolate spent the least time doing an anagram task before a "taste-rating task" in which they expected that chocolate foods might be available. CONCLUSION: Converging measures of craving indicate that deprivation causes craving and overeating, but primarily in restrained eaters.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Matching effects on eating: do individual differences make a difference?

Dyads composed of unacquainted females watched a video while snacking on pizza. Their extraversion and self-monitoring scores were used to predict the extent to which individuals within dyads matched each other's food intake. Matching of intake was high irrespective of the personality composition of the dyad. We consider elements of the situation that enhanced matching and whether personality might moderate matching effects.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Self-enhancing effects of exposure to thin-body images.

OBJECTIVE: This study examines the effect of thin-body media images on mood, self-esteem, and self-image ratings of restrained and unrestrained eaters. A secondary purpose was to examine whether these effects were influenced by exposure duration. METHOD: Under the guise of a perception study, participants were exposed to thin-body or control advertisements (e.g., perfume bottles) for either 7 or 150 ms and then completed a questionnaire packet. RESULTS: Restrained eaters reported more favorable self-image and social self-esteem (but not appearance self-esteem) scores after exposure to thin-body images than after exposure to control advertisements. The self-image and social self-esteem scores of unrestrained eaters were unaffected by advertisement type, but their appearance self-esteem scores were lower after exposure to thin-body advertisements. No differences were found for mood ratings and total self-esteem. DISCUSSION: We discuss restraint status as a moderator of the effects of thin-body images on women's body image.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Accuracy in the estimation of body weight: an alternate test of the motivated-distortion hypothesis.

OBJECTIVE: Inaccuracies in self-reported weight are believed to represent a motivated distortion, but cognitive or perceptual biases have not been excluded. We examined the ability of participants to estimate the weight of a target person as a means of distinguishing between motivated distortions and perceptual biases. METHOD: Participants (restrained eaters and unrestrained eaters; women and men) estimated the weight of a target individual, which was compared with the actual weight of the target individual. RESULTS: Restrained and unrestrained eaters did not differ in their estimates of the target's weight, and men underestimated the target's weight to a greater extent than did women. DISCUSSION: The pattern of inaccuracies observed does not parallel those found in research on self-reported weight. This observation suggests that perceptual biases do not explain inaccuracies in self-reported weight and that such inaccuracies may be the result of motivated distortions. Issues regarding data analysis and presentation are also discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

A word-stem completion task to assess implicit processing of appearance-related information.

OBJECTIVE: This paper reports on the development and utility of a new implicit measure of appearance-related information processing. METHODS: A 20-item word-stem completion task was constructed, in which each word stem could be completed with either an appearance-related word or at least one non-appearance alternative. The measure was tested in four different experiments, most investigating the impact of acute exposure to media-portrayed thin idealised female images. RESULTS: Exposure to media images or other appearance-related material led to the generation of more appearance- or weight-related words in both female and male samples. CONCLUSION: It was concluded that the word-stem task has empirical utility as a simple, self-paced and sensitive outcome measure in experimental studies of media exposure. We conceptualise the word-stem task as a measure of appearance- and weight-schema activation.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

Conformity and dietary disinhibition: a test of the ego-strength model of self-regulation.

OBJECTIVE: Ego-strength depletion was examined as an explanation for dietary disinhibition in restrained eaters. We predicted that the depletion of ego strength resulting from having to choose whether to conform would undermine dietary restraint. METHOD: Participants completed an Asch-type conformity task, after which they completed a taste-rating task in which food intake was measured. RESULTS: As predicted, restrained eaters who repeatedly exercised choice ate significantly more than did restrained eaters who did not exercise choice. DISCUSSION: An ego-strength model of dietary restraint is discussed.

Cognition↗

PubMed2003

The specificity of restrained versus unrestrained eaters' responses to food cues: general desire to eat, or craving for the cued food?

Previous research has shown that exposure to food cues increases eating, especially in restrained eaters. The present study attempted to determine whether this elevated consumption reflects a general desire to eat in response to food cues, or specific desire/craving for the cued food. Restrained and unrestrained eaters were exposed to the smell of either pizza, cookies, or no smell for 10 minutes, were asked to write their thoughts (corresponding to the smell cue) about pizza, cookies or in general, and were then presented with either pizza or cookies to 'taste and rate'. Results indicated that restrained eaters are more responsive than are unrestrained eaters to pre-eating exposure to smell and thought cues, eating significantly more after such cues. An interaction with food type, however, indicated that restrained eaters ate more only when the food presented to eat was the same as the prior food cues. Self-reported desire to eat, liking, and craving for a particular food increased somewhat for restrained eaters after exposure to the smell and thought of that food. Restrained eaters' intake of a food that differed from the pre-eating food cues did not differ from their intake following no prior exposure to food cues. Restrained eaters thus showed a highly specific response to exposure to food cues.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

The influence of social norms on hunger ratings and eating.

Restrained and unrestrained eaters were exposed to fictitious hunger reports (high-hunger, low-hunger) of ostensible prior participants in the experiment. In the control condition, participants were not exposed to prior-participant reports. Participants rated their own hunger and then consumed cookies during a 'taste-test.' The fictitious hunger ratings of prior participants exerted a strong effect (p<0.001) on actual participants' hunger ratings; however, food intake was not affected by the fictitious hunger ratings (or by the actual participants' hunger ratings). We discuss the disjunction between hunger ratings and eating, specifically whether (a) hunger reports were fabricated in response to social pressure or (b) eating is controlled by factors other than hunger.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Effects of the presence of others on food intake: a normative interpretation.

The authors review the effect of the presence of others on food intake. In social facilitation studies, people tend to eat more in groups than when alone. In modeling studies, the presence of others may facilitate or inhibit intake, depending on how much these other people eat. Studies of impression management demonstrate that people tend to eat less in the presence of others than when alone. The authors attempt to reconcile these divergent literatures by reference to a model of inhibitory norms that govern eating. In the presence of palatable food, and in the absence of clear signals of satiety, people look outward to cues from the environment to determine when to stop eating. Socially derived inhibitory norms can account for either increased or decreased intake in the presence of others, depending on how much the others eat and the extent to which one is eager to impress them.

Animals↗

PubMed2002

Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we diet: effects of anticipated deprivation on food intake in restrained and unrestrained eaters.

This study examined the effect of anticipated food deprivation on intake in restrained and unrestrained eaters. Participants were randomly assigned to a diet condition, in which they expected to diet for a week, or to a control (no-diet) condition. Immediately after being assigned to a condition, participants completed a taste-rating task in which food consumption was measured. Restrained eaters in the diet condition consumed significantly more food than did restrained eaters in the no-diet condition or unrestrained eaters in either condition. Unrestrained eaters consumed the same amount regardless of condition. These results confirm that merely planning to go on a diet can trigger overeating in restrained eaters, reflecting the dynamic connection between dieting and overeating.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Causes of eating disorders.

Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa have emerged as the predominant eating disorders. We review the recent research evidence pertaining to the development of these disorders, including sociocultural factors (e.g., media and peer influences), family factors (e.g., enmeshment and criticism), negative affect, low self-esteem, and body dissatisfaction. Also reviewed are cognitive and biological aspects of eating disorders. Some contributory factors appear to be necessary for the appearance of eating disorders, but none is sufficient. Eating disorders may represent a way of coping with problems of identity and personal control.

Cognition Disorders↗

PubMed2002

If at first you don't succeed. False hopes of self-change.

Despite repeated failure at attempts to change aspects of their behavior, people make frequent attempts at self-change. The generally negative outcome of many such self-change efforts makes it difficult to understand why so many individuals persist at these attempts. The authors have described this cycle of failure and renewed effort as a "false hope syndrome" characterized by unrealistic expectations about the likely speed, amount, ease, and consequences of self-change attempts. In this article, the authors further develop their conceptualization of this syndrome and review its evidential basis. They review the reasons why so many people tend to fail in their self-change attempts and then examine how people interpret these failures in such a way that they are led to keep trying repeatedly despite apparently overwhelming odds. Finally, the authors discuss the psychological consequences of repeated failure and analyze the distinction between confidence and overconfidence.

Attitude↗