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Assessing the relationship between food-related mental imagery and appetite
The interaction between metabolic states and mental imagery (MI) of food is crucial to understanding appetite regulation. This research investigates whether the strength of food-related MI varies with hunger levels and whether repeated MI affects hedonic evaluations of food items. Two experiments were conducted to address these questions.
In Experiment 1, participants produced mental imagery of flavors and textures using visual cues while in either a hungry or satiated condition. The results indicated that hunger significantly enhanced MI strength for flavor but not texture. Specifically, vividness, ease, and generation speed of MI were notably greater when participants were in a state of hunger.
Experiment 2 shifted focus to the hedonic evaluation of food. Here, participants rated their liking and wanting for food samples before and after completing 30 trials of either flavor- or texture-related MI. The findings revealed that while repeated MI did not significantly alter the hedonic value of the food items, the imagined liking did decrease over the course of the trials.
These results suggest two key insights: metabolic state selectively affects the generation of multisensory MI, and MI influences imagined hedonic responses without altering actual perceptual evaluations. This study enriches our understanding of the complex relationship between mental imagery, reward processing, and metabolic states, yielding valuable implications for nutritional psychology. [NPID: Mental imagery, appetite regulation, hunger, hedonic, multisensory]
Year: 2026
