gms | German Medical Science

Our environment can easily lead to overconsumption: palatable, high caloric food is omnipresent. In addition, commercials and advertisements are constantly convincing people to eat unhealthy snack foods. Obese people appeared more responsive to these environmental cues. In addition, obese people are appeared less effective in inhibitory control and this might mediate the effect: especially disinhibited people might be reactive to environmental cues. In the current study, the effects of inhibitory control and food advertisements on purchases are studied. Participants perform the stop signal task and purchase all the foods they would need for themselves for 3 whole days in an internet supermarket. In one condition, high caloric food items are advertised, in the other condition no advertisements are shown. Results showed that the more impulsive participants were more responsive to advertisements and bought more calories, but only when they were feeling hungry. On the long term, impulsive people might therefore be at risk for overweight and obesity.