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Encyclopedia of Nutritional Psychology

Incentive Salience

Evidence-informed definition Updated June 17, 2025 How to cite this entry

Incentive salience is a motivational property assigned by the brain to a stimulus, making it attract  attention of the individual and and ‘wanted’. According to Incentive Salience Theory of Addiction, this wanting is independent of whether the person likes the stimulus.

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Written by The Center for Nutritional Psychology
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The Center for Nutritional Psychology. (2025). Incentive Salience. In Encyclopedia of Nutritional Psychology. The Center for Nutritional Psychology.

https://www.nutritional-psychology.org/encyclopedia/incentive-salience/
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