Dieting- success and/or failure

• Hedonic eating:

  • Considered in terms of pleasant or unpleasant situations. People fail because they enjoy eating.
  • Stroebe- restrained eaters struggle to stick to their diets because they are more sensitive to the hedonic (pleasurable) characteristics of food & eating.
  • The restrained eaters' thoughts are geared toward pursuing pleasurable food & conflicting thoughts (dieting) are inhibited. Because of this, the dieter struggles to remain focused on his/ her diet & control food intake.
• Hedonic eating:

  • Mischel & Ayduk elaborated on this theory suggesting a secondary process: attention allocations, which makes dieting even harder for the hedonic eater.
  • Attention allocation refers to the fact that once exposed to a desirable food, the pleasurable thoughts begin & the dieter finds it hard to shift attention elsewhere.
  • Thoughts of dieting & the motivations behind this are inhibited as the pleasurable thoughts take over, making the temptation hard to resist.
• Evaluation of Hedonic eating- strength:

  • Supportive evidence- Brunstrom (2004) tested the salivary response of PPs when in close proximity to hot pizza.
  • They found that restrained eaters (dieters) had a greater response (drooling) than unrestrained eaters. This supports the hedonic theory, as it suggests that the dieters were more preoccupied by the pizza than the non-dieters.
• Role of denial & the theory of ironic processes of mental control:

  • Research consistently shown that the more you try to suppress or deny a thought, the more the opposite effect happens (thinking about it more).
  • Wegner et al had 2 groups & asked one group to not think about a white bear & the other to think about a white bear. They had to ring a bell when they thought about the bear. The group told not to, rang the bell more than those told to think about the bear- Wegner termed this 'the theory of ironic processes of mental control'.
• The theory of ironic processes of mental control:

  • Wegner admits that in his theory, the urge is only small, so other factors are more likely to play a more important role.
  • When on a diet, you end up spending more time thinking about the forbidden foods- making them more attractive to you.
• Evaluation of ironic processes of mental control- strength:

  • Research support- Soetens et al divided a group of restrained eaters into either high or low disinhibition. The high disinhibition restrained group (tried to eat less but often over-ate) used more thought suppression than other groups.
• Evaluation of ironic processes of mental control- strength:

  • Redden suggests the key to success is paying attention to what we eat- says we get bored of experiences the more we repeat them, so we quickly get bored of our diet food. If we break it down from 'salad' to lettuce, tomatoes etc, we'll get less bored & stick to it longer.
  • To test theory, Redden gave 135 PPs 22 jelly beans, a bean at a time. As each bean given, PPs given a bit of info about the bean. 1 group had dull info like 'bean 3' & other group got more like 'coca-cola flavoured bean'. 1st group got bored much quicker than 2nd.
• Evaluation of ironic processes of mental control- weakness:

  • Massive lack of ecological validity; doesn't reflect dieting in real life.
• Other ways to succeed in dieting:

  • Support groups- slimming world, weight watchers (can share recipes & experience etc)
  • Helps by being held accountable, eg keeping a food diary so become aware of what eating (no hidden/ forgotten calories), more motivation etc.