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. 2021 Jun 22;10(7):1440.
doi: 10.3390/foods10071440.

Measuring Implicit Approach-Avoidance Tendencies towards Food Using a Mobile Phone outside the Lab

Anne-Marie Brouwer  1 , Jasper J van Beers  1 , Priya Sabu  1 , Ivo V Stuldreher  1 , Hilmar G Zech  2 , Daisuke Kaneko  3
Affiliations

Measuring Implicit Approach-Avoidance Tendencies towards Food Using a Mobile Phone outside the Lab

Anne-Marie Brouwer et al. Foods. .

Abstract

Implicit ('unconscious') approach-avoidance tendencies towards stimuli can be measured using the Approach Avoidance Task (AAT). We recently expanded a toolbox for analyzing the raw data of a novel, mobile version of the AAT (mAAT), that asks participants to move their phone towards their face (pull) or away (push) in response to images presented on the phone. We here tested the mAAT reaction time and the mAAT distance in a study with 71 Dutch participants that were recruited online and performed an experiment without coming to the laboratory. The participants used both the mAAT and (explicit) rating scales to respond to photographic images of food. As hypothesized, the rated wanting, rated valence and mAAT reaction time indicated a preference for palatable over unpalatable food, and for Dutch over Asian food. Additionally, as expected, arousal was rated higher for unpalatable than for palatable food, and higher for Dutch than for Asian food. The mAAT distance indicated that the unpalatable food images were moved across larger distances, regardless of the movement direction (pull or push), compared to the palatable food images; and the Dutch food images were moved across larger distances than the Asian food images. We conclude that the mAAT can be used to implicitly probe approach-avoidance motivation for complex images in the food domain. The new measure of mAAT distance may be used as an implicit measure of arousal. The ratings and the mAAT measures do not reflect the exact same information and may complement each other. Implicit measures, such as mAAT variables, are particularly valuable when response biases that can occur when using explicit ratings are expected.

Keywords: Approach–Avoidance Task (AAT); approach–avoidance; arousal; consumer; food images; implicit measure; mobile phone; self-report; valence; wanting.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Example image from each of the four food image categories. Each category was represented by 20 unique images.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Schematic depiction of the experimental procedure.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Explicit ratings valence (a), arousal (b) and wanting (c) for each of the four stimulus categories. Error bars indicate standard errors of the mean.
Figure 4
Figure 4
mAAT RT (a) and mAAT distance (b) for each of the four stimulus categories and each movement direction, pull and push.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Correlation between food neophobia score and EmojiGrid valence (a) and wanting (b) for Asian food images. Each data point represents one participant.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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