A picture is worth a thousand words: Framing of food choice options affects decision conflict and mid-fontal theta in food choice task

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

Abstract

In food choices, conflict arises when choosing between a healthy, but less tasty food item and a tasty, but less healthy food item. The underlying assumption is that people trade-off the health and taste properties of food items to reach a decision. To probe this assumption, we presented food items either as colored images (image condition, e.g. photograph of a granola bar) or as pre-matched percentages of taste and health values (text condition, e.g., 20% healthy and 80% tasty). We recorded choices, response times and electroencephalography activity to calculate mid-frontal theta power as a marker of conflict. At the behavioral level, we found higher response times for healthy compared to unhealthy choices, and for difficult compared to easy decisions in both conditions, indicating the experience of a decision conflict. At the neural level, mid-frontal theta power was higher for healthy choices than unhealthy choices and difficult choices compared to easy choices, but only in the image condition. Those results suggest that either conflict type and/or decision strategies differ between the image and text conditions. The present results can be helpful in understanding how dietary decisions can be influenced towards healthier food choices.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number107616
JournalAppetite
Volume201
Publication statusPublished - 1 Oct 2024
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0002-4408-6016/work/165875605
ORCID /0000-0002-1005-0090/work/165876694
ORCID /0000-0002-8403-0359/work/165877637
ORCID /0000-0003-4910-3468/work/165878379

Keywords

Keywords

  • Decision conflict, Decision making, Electroencephalography, Food choice, Mid-frontal theta