Predictors of state-based changes in wanting and liking.

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience and Behavior
• Appetite Regulation
• Food Psychology

Background:

• Hunger drives food seeking and consumption, typically leading to positive experiences.
• Post-consumption, both desire (wanting) and enjoyment (liking) decrease, with wanting declining more significantly.
• This phenomenon is termed the 'affective discrepancy effect', highlighting a divergence in hedonic responses.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the state-based, sensory, and memory-based predictors of affective changes in food wanting and liking.
• To understand the role of memory, particularly recollections of food's fillingness, in the affective discrepancy effect.
• To explore how memory influences food intake initiation.

Main Methods:

• Participants completed tasks assessing food wanting, liking, bodily state, and written recollections before and after a meal.
• Tasks included rating snack desirability, flavor liking, and perceived fullness, alongside recalling eating experiences.
• Pre- and post-meal data were compared to analyze changes in affective states and their predictors.

Main Results:

• Changes in food liking were primarily predicted by alterations in flavor liking.
• State-based changes in food wanting were significantly predicted by memory-based information on flavor liking and fullness.
• Increased recollections of food fillingness post-meal best predicted the affective discrepancy effect, suggesting memory's influence on wanting.

Conclusions:

• Memory, particularly unprompted recollections of a food's fillingness, plays a crucial role in modulating food wanting.
• The affective discrepancy effect may be partly explained by state-dependent memory influencing desire for food.
• Memory selectively influences wanting, potentially impacting decisions about initiating or continuing food intake.