PICTURE a wedge of velvety chocolate fudge cake. Hungry? Unlikely as it sounds, showing weight-conscious women pictures of sweet treats may actually strengthen their resolve to eat healthily, rather than encouraging them to cheat.
Advertisers clearly believe images of tasty morsels persuade people to buy, but psychologist of Utrecht University in the Netherlands speculated that temptation might in fact heighten self-control.
To test out this theory, he and his colleagues showed 54 female students a picture of either a slice of chocolate cake or a flower, under the guise of a memory test. They then questioned the students about any plans to eat more healthily and offered them a choice between a chocolate or oatmeal cookie.
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Women shown the cake picture gave a higher priority to their healthy eating intentions than their counterparts shown the flower. They were also significantly more likely to pick the oatmeal cookie 鈥� which earlier tests showed was generally perceived as the healthier option (Appetite, ). 鈥淔ood temptations do not always trigger indulgence鈥�, says Kroese. 鈥淚t seems that seeing a food temptation reminded people of their goal to watch their weight, and helped them act accordingly.鈥�
Previous studies suggested that smelling palatable, unhealthy foods makes people rate healthy eating as highly important, but this is the first research to look at how unhealthy food affects snacking behaviour.
of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago agrees with Kroese鈥檚 conclusion. 鈥淚n moderation, this positive impact of food temptations will overcome the negative impact 鈥� the urge to indulge,鈥� she says.
Kroese suggests that sticking pictures of tempting foods on the fridge door may help to bring weight-watching goals to mind. But he says that the results can only be applied to women wanting to lose weight, as it is unclear whether they would hold for the general population.
His team is now looking into varying the strength of a temptation. Early findings suggest that while very tempting images seem to remind people of their weight-loss goals, weakly attractive images do not prompt the same mechanism to kick in, making them 鈥渕ore dangerous鈥�, Kroese says.