Stopping automatic behaviour automatically: A new approach to changing unhealthy eating habits

There has been a major increase in the prevalence of overweight and obesity leading to what the World Health Organization has called a "global epidemic". The major cause for this increase is over-consumption, particularly over-consumption of fatty food (e.g., fast food). This epidemic can only be controlled, if we succeed in inducing people to abandon their unhealthy eating behaviours and to adopt healthy ones. This is not an easy task, as failures of many past campaigns amply demonstrate. Because eating behaviour is largely habitual and controlled by automatic processes (Voorstel Programma Gezonde Voeding, ZonMw, 2009, p. 13), the traditional health education approach that targets explicit attitudes and conscious intentions with persuasive communications is often ineffective. Even if people intend to control their impulsive eating behaviour, they often fail to act according to their intentions. To achieve effective behaviour change, we therefore need strategies that influence behaviour at the implicit level. This project proposes the novel strategy of combating impulsive responses towards fatty/unhealthy food with tools that rely on automatic processes themselves. Because people often lack the mental resources to change their unhealthy behaviour, we need to install automatic inhibition mechanisms that delegate the control of impulsive behaviors to the environment. Inhibition of impulsive behaviors can become automatic by presenting stop signals in the immediate environment shortly after the perception of impulse related objects. A stop signal is a cue or sign in the environment that causes people to inhibit their behavior by suppressing the motor program that otherwise would produce overt behavior. Stop cues that follow impulse-evoking food objects have two major consequences: (1) they decrease the implicit positive attitudes toward the food objects and (2) they lead to the establishment of an association between the impulse-related objects and inhibition of responding to it. The important innovative aspect of our approach is that it does not rely on conscious intentions to prevent impulsive behaviors. The automatic inhibition will therefore even be effective in high risk situations, when cognitive or motivational resources are depleted. The relevance of this new strategy lies in showing how impulsive responses to food objects can be altered automatically in a food-rich environment where there is ready access to unhealthy and healthy food (such as a home refrigerator, cafeteria, restaurant, supermarket, etc.), and to demonstrate its value relative to other strategies that rely on conscious deliberation. Our research program combines both laboratory and field studies to test this new approach by changing unhealthy impulsive eating behaviour among youth, workers in companies and people who are overweight. The results of the proposed research will be relevant to both weight gain prevention and weight loss interventions. It will also improve our knowledge of how to influence implicit attitudes and change habitual behavior.