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Affective pictures and the open library of affective foods (OLAF): Tools to investigate emotions toward food in adults
Standardized collections of affective food pictures are available nowadays, helping provide personalized assessments and visual data on food items. Of which, the OLAF (Open Library of Affective Foods) remains the only set devoted to studying emotional responses towards food. Taking emotional reactions to food into account (specifically, how food cues could be related to strong emotional experiences that are not related to food) is plausibly a cornerstone for corroborating food evaluations that involve different individuals and groups, as proposed by a number of researchers in the field. Miccoli et al. (2016) present their continued works on the OLAF, which includes a collection of food images and sets of standardized emotion-provoking images (erotica, mutilations, and neutrals from the International Affective Picture System/IAPS), aimed for use as a valid evaluation tool within groups of adults. The OLAF displays high-calorie sweet and savory foods and low-calorie fruit and vegetable images that comply with IAPS, coupled with emotional images, which helps to establish a consistent affective rating. The authors investigated how exposure to food and affective images affected participants in terms of derived pleasures, arousal, dominance, and food craving. Derived results confirmed previous research findings and further affirmed the fidelity of evaluation using OLAF, where the results displayed patterns congruent with literature on emotional research as follows: regarding OLAF evaluation, high calorie sweet and savory food pictures were found to evoke the highest response in the pleasure category, and a low response in the arousal category compared to erotica. The authors conclude that using OLAF and affective images represents a reliable investigative tool to evaluate emotional responses towards food in a motivational structure. [NPID: Emotional response, OLAF, IAPS]
Year: 2016
