Self-Controlled Food and Leisure Activity Decision-Making

Abstract

The experiment aimed to examine the effects of stress, coping, weight status, age, and attribute weightiness on health decision-making in females and males. Participants completed an online experiment consisting of self-reports, attribute rating tasks, and mouse-tracking choice tasks. Stress, coping, and weight status were obtained from self-reports. The food rating task consisted of rating a series of foods on taste, health, and liking. The activity rating task consisted of rating a series of leisure activities on enjoyment, health, and liking. Mouse- tracking choice tasks consist of choosing to eat or not eat foods and do or not do activities. There were significant gender differences in attribute decision weights on preference – females showed higher taste and enjoyments attribute decision weights compared to males after controlling for age. In females, food self-control was associated with engagement coping and health attribute decision weight. In males, food self-control was associated with stress and health attribute decision weight. In both females and males, activity self-control was associated with solely by enjoyment attribute decision weight. Overall, the importance of health attributes on preference was associated with self-controlled food decisions, while the importance of enjoyment attributes on preference was associated with self-controlled activity decisions.