Habit leads to mindless eating even if the food is stale

A study published online in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin suggests that people will eat a snack out of habit while watching TV or engaging in some other activity, even if the food tastes bad. One experiment examined people's eating habits when provided boxes of popcorn and water while watching movie trailers. The popcorn was either freshly popped or one week old and stale. The findings showed that participants who said that they typically eat popcorn at the movies consumed about the same amount of popcorn, whether it was fresh or stale. In another experiment, the researchers found that moviegoers who ate popcorn with their nondominant hand ate less stale popcorn. Read more about the study on LiveScience and the Los Angeles Times.

The study "The Pull of the Past: When Do Habits Persist Despite Conflict With Motives?”, by David Neal of the University of Southern California (Los Angeles) and co-authors, was published Aug. 22, 2011, in the online version of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, a publication of SPSP.