You Eat with Your Eyes: Framing of Food Choice Options Affects Decision Conflict and Visual Attention in Food Choice Task

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Abstract

Background/Objectives: Frequent poor dietary choices can have significant consequences. To understand the underlying decision-making processes, most food choice tasks present a binary choice between a tasty but less healthy option and a healthy but less tasty option. It is assumed that people come to a decision by trading off the respective health and taste values. However, it is unclear whether and to what extent food choice goes beyond this. Methods: We use a novel eye-tracking experiment where we compare a typical food choice task (image condition) with an abstract value-based decision-making task using pre-matched percentages of health and taste (text condition; e.g., 10% healthy and 80% tasty) in 78 participants. Results: We find a higher frequency of unhealthy choices and reduced response times in the image condition compared to the text condition, suggesting more impulsive decision making. The eye-tracking analysis shows that, in the text condition, the item corresponding to the subsequent choice receives more attention than the alternative option, whereas in the image condition this only applies to the healthy item. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that decision-making in typical food choice tasks goes beyond a mere value-based trade-off. These differences could be due to the involvement of different attentional processes in typical food choice tasks or due to the modality of stimulus presentation. These results could help to understand why people prefer tasty but unhealthy food options even when health is important to them.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number3343
JournalNutrients
Volume16
Issue number19
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2024
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

PubMed 39408310
ORCID /0000-0002-1005-0090/work/170585881
ORCID /0000-0002-8403-0359/work/170586514
ORCID /0000-0003-4910-3468/work/170586523
ORCID /0000-0002-4408-6016/work/170586757

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Keywords

  • attentional processes, decision conflict, decision-making, eye-tracking, food choice