title: Is sensitivity to reward associated with the malleability of implicit inclinations toward high-fat food?
abstract: Two experiments examined the effect of positive and negative priming on implicit approach and avoidance inclinations toward high-fat food stimuli in participants high or low in reward sensitivity, using personalized unipolar variants of the Implicit Association Test (IAT; A. G. Greenwald, D. E. McGhee, & J. L. K. Schwartz, 1998, "Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The Implicit Association Test," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 74, pp. 1464-1480). Participants high in reward sensitivity showed an automatic processing bias that is characterized by a dual vulnerability of being particularly susceptible to priming of the rewarding aspects of high-fat foods, while being unaffected by priming of the negative aspects of those foods. In contrast, participants low in reward sensitivity generally showed no facilitation of implicit-approach inclinations following positive priming, but consistently showed facilitation of implicit-avoidance inclinations following negative priming. These results are consistent with the revised reinforcement sensitivity theory ( J. A. Gray & N. McNaughton, 2000, The neuropsychology of anxiety: An enquiry into the functions of the septo-hippocampal system, 2nd ed., New York, NY, Oxford University Press.) and suggest that the systems mediating reward sensitivity and punishment sensitivity are not orthogonal, as predicted by the separable subsystems hypothesis, but can be interdependent, as predicted by the joint subsystems hypothesis.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia.
authors.forename: Casey R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Ashby
authors.forename: Werner G K
authors.initials: WG
authors.lastname: Stritzke
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001244:Association; D001290:Attitude; D004041:Dietary Fats; D005247:Feeding Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011582:Psychological Theory; D011897:Random Allocation; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology; D060865:Repetition Priming / Q000502:physiology; D012201:Reward; D014936:Word Association Tests; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D004041:Dietary Fats