Meta-Decision Awareness in Food Choices: Preliminary Findings and Research Design

Asistencia presencial: Aula E1-1-01, Campus de Córdoba (Calle Escritor Aguayo, 4).

Abstract: Most people know their food choices could be healthier  yet they keep making the same ones. This gap between knowing and doing is partly explained by two well-documented cognitive biases: present bias, the tendency to prioritise immediate gratification over future health consequences, and optimism bias, the tendency to underestimate one’s personal susceptibility to diet-related risks. This study asks whether making people aware of these biases can shift how they think and feel about food and whether that awareness needs to be about food specifically in order to work.

We present the design and pilot evidence of an experiment in which participants are assigned to one of five conditions: a present-bias awareness intervention, an optimism-bias awareness intervention, a general metacognition condition, a hindsight-bias condition (an active control with no established link to eating behaviour), and a control group. Crucially, all bias-awareness interventions are framed around academic performance rather than food choice, testing the hypothesis that conceptual awareness of a bias in one domain generalises to another domain governed by structurally similar intertemporal and self-assessment mechanisms  thereby avoiding demand effects and socially desirable responding that direct appeals to healthy eating typically induce.

Primary outcomes include changes in perceived health, susceptibility to diet-related disease, self-assessed nutritional knowledge, concern about eating behaviour, perceived behavioural control, and allocation in a hypothetical food budget exercise.

To verify that participants successfully connected the concepts to food behaviour, we include open-ended reflection exercises following the intervention. The five-group design allows us to separate the specific effect of bias awareness from more general effects  such as simply thinking more carefully, being exposed to any new concept, or responding in a socially desirable way. Pilot data (N=50) inform instrument refinement and power calculations for full-scale data collection.

Link al seminario: https://loyola.webex.com/meet/rede3c