Importance of IMPLICit factors in EATing behaviour: How do food-choice decision mechanisms differ in normal versus overweight/obese adults? – IMPLICEAT

The rise of overweight and obesity in France, as well as in many developed countries, has led to the emergence of nutritional information policies that aim to change people's diets (French National Program on Nutrition and Health, PNNS 2010). However, knowing that food choice decision-making is influenced by both conscious (explicit) and non-conscious (implicit) factors, achieve to change an individual's diet is very difficult. Up to now, nutritional information policies rely exclusively on explicit information and have unfortunately a limited impact on consumer behavior. Moreover, many studies on consumer behavior are essentially based on methods that measure people's conscious attitudes towards food, such as scaling, questionnaires, and verbal reports. It is clearly established that such direct measures may present several drawbacks because participants’ answers can be strongly influenced by factors such as social desirability and cultural convention. Consequently, a better understanding of “how do consumers make choices”, both consciously and non-consciously, is a crucial question.
In this context, the main scientific objective of IMPLICEAT is to better understand food choice decision mechanisms in normal weight, overweight and obese adults. The central hypothesis is that people cognition and eating behaviour, in particular food choices, are not only influenced by conscious perception of cues but also by non-conscious/ non-attentive exposure to these cues. IMPLICEAT provides unique opportunities, at a technical level (1) to develop innovative methodologies both at the behavioral level as in neuroscience; at a societal level (2) to disseminate, towards public authorities, substantial findings based on implicit approaches, adaptable in different socio economic contexts, in order to highlight links between food choice, health and implicit cognition.
IMPLICEAT represents an ambitious work because, in France, psychology and eating behaviour sciences still remain two separate fields of research. Exploring these two fields, both at a behavioral and neuroscience level, represents a challenging exercise that would provide a global vision of the role played by consciousness in the food decision-making, in normal, overweight and obese adults. Moreover, IMPLICEAT is a fundamental research project, which will give the opportunity to the coordinator, as a young researcher, to develop her own research topics and to lead her own group.