NP Method Development

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]

Protogerou & Hagger (2018) highlight a fundamental issue that hinders the translation and comparative efforts in psychology research, which is the difficulty faced in attempting to replicate studies and generate published results using their unique disclosed methods. These failures in replication are presumed to be the result of biases such as HARK-ing (hypothesizing after results are known), p-hacking (manipulating data analysis in favor of producing significant p values), negligence in accurately conducting research and introducing confounders in data collected and analyzed as a result, and equal negligence in reporting study methodology and results in a standardized manner. It becomes evidently clear that adopting a standardized, explicit manner in the reporting of study methodology and findings is critical to scientific progress, as it would enable studies to be replicated and verified in a manner that prevents the introduction of bias or incorrect inferences from invalid data. Researchers are now increasingly attentive to the requirement of conducting quality research and reporting findings in a clear and concise fashion that makes it suitable for studies to be evaluated. In this article, the authors highlight the problems faced with the standards of quality in psychology studies, and present validated methods that help evaluate psychology studies. Finally, the authors advocate for developing assessment checklists and utilizing them, particularly in survey studies. This is due to the fact that surveys represent the most commonly used research technique. [NPID: Study quality, appraisal, survey, psychology]

Food elicits several affective responses in us, from sensory (visual, olfactory, etc.) to emotional, which play a key role in influencing product choice and new product adoption. In this literature review by Kaneko et al. (2018), the authors present a detailed summary of the currently employed methods used to evaluate emotional responses to food, organized under a 3 x 3 level architecture: level of measurement (physiological, behavioral, and cognitive) and level of emotional processing (unconscious sensory, perceptual/early cognitive, and conscious/decision making). This literature review covered 101 articles (1997-2016) and generated 59 measurement parameters, however, it was noted that 60% were self-reported and evaluated the conscious/decision-making level of emotional processing. As the aim of this literature review was to aid in establishing a measurement tool for emotions invoked by food, which validates future studies and allows comparison between studies, and to recognize that the aforementioned two levels were overrepresented, the authors make the following recommendations: Firstly, to only use recognized and accepted methods of measurement. Secondly, to diversify measurement tools to encompass all levels of emotional processing, and finally, to help improve the validity of the food choice model and other employed models. To achieve this, the authors recommend providing collected datasets containing physiological, behavioral, and cognitive information. The authors conclude that this 3 x 3 categorization may help researchers compile a set of complementary measures (i.e., a “toolbox”) for their studies. [NPID: Food evoked emotions, food experience, cognitive, emotional processing]