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Gender differences in multi-attribute dietary decision making under time pressure: A hierarchical drift-diffusion
Mengying Liu1, Jingyi Jiang2, Jianping Huang2
1Department of Psychology, Soochow University, Suzhou, China; Department of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Appetite
|December 14, 2025
Summary
Time pressure changes how men and women make food choices. Men shift to taste-focused decisions, while both genders require less evidence, impacting healthy eating strategies.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive psychology
- Neuroscience
- Nutritional science
Background:
- Time pressure significantly impacts decision-making across various contexts.
- Its specific effects on complex dietary choices and potential gender variations are not well understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how time pressure influences the cognitive mechanisms underlying dietary decisions in men and women.
- To explore potential gender-specific responses to time constraints in food choices.
Main Methods:
- Utilized an incentive-compatible paradigm for binary choices between health and taste attributes.
- Compared decision-making under time-pressure and no-time-pressure conditions.
- Employed hierarchical drift-diffusion modeling (HDDM) to analyze cognitive processes.
Main Results:
- Time pressure altered choice patterns differently in men and women, without affecting overall response times or healthier choices.
- Men shifted towards hedonic (taste-dominant) processing, while women maintained taste-focused strategies.
- Both genders exhibited reduced decision thresholds, needing less evidence to make a choice under time constraints.
- Time pressure diminished baseline gender differences in perceptual-motor speed.
Conclusions:
- Temporal constraints reshape dietary decision-making via distinct gender-specific strategies and shared adaptive mechanisms.
- Findings offer insights for developing personalized environments to encourage healthier eating habits.
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