Life

Thinking with your stomach? No problem

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-12-22 08:05

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University say they have found that when people think about a particular food they don't become hungrier for it but, rather, their cravings for it reduce. The findings were reported in the journal Science.

The notion that thinking about a hamburger, for example, makes a person hungry for one has been widely held. There is a lot of literature on food cravings that suggests fantasizing about a food will stimulate an appetite for it.

The majority of scientists have held the opinion that thinking about a food sets in motion the same neurological processes as eating, smelling or seeing it.

But Carey Morewedge, who led the research, and his fellow researchers believe that the more a person thinks about eating a food, the less he craves it.

Morewedge says the evidence suggests that when a person pictures himself eating foods he desires, imagining the experience thoroughly, he may actually want less of those foods.

Thinking of a food - how it tastes, smells or looks - does increase our appetite. But performing the mental imagery of actually eating that food decreases our desire for it, Morewedge explains.

"Most people think that imagining a food increases their desire for it and whets their appetite. Our findings show that it is not so simple," says Morewedge, who is an assistant professor of social and decision sciences at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

In one experiment, a control group was told to imagine putting 33 coins in a washing machine one at a time. Another group was told to imagine putting 30 coins into a washing machine and eating three M&M candies one at a time. The final group was told to imagine putting three coins into a washing machine and eating 30 M&Ms one at a time.

All the test subjects were then given a chance to eat freely from a bowl of M&Ms. Those who had imagined eating 30 candies actually ate fewer when the bowl was offered.

"Our findings show that habituation is not only governed by the sensory inputs of sight, smell, sound and touch but also by how the consumption experience is mentally represented," says Joachim Vosgerau, an assistant professor of marketing, who was on the research team.

To a certain extent, simply imagining an experience is a substitute for having that experience, Vosgerau adds. The difference between mentally imagining something and actually having the experience may be much less than believed, he says.