Cognitive Design

When changing behaviors the onset of a craving can defeat the best intentions, strongest will and well-funded health program. Cravings are specific and powerful. They have more visceral force than emotions or drive states such as hunger.  In doing cognitive design for behavior change I always ask – are cravings a factor?

According to research just published in the journal, Current Directions in Psychological Sciences, and reported on here, mental imagery plays a key role in the cognition of forming and defeating food cravings.

“Results of one study showed that the strength of participants’ cravings was linked to how vividly they imagined the food. Mental imagery (imagining food or anything else) takes up cognitive resources, or brain power. Studies have shown that when subjects are imagining something, they have a hard time completing various cognitive tasks. In one experiment, volunteers who were craving chocolate recalled fewer words and took longer to solve math problems than volunteers who were not craving chocolate. These links between food cravings and mental imagery, along with the findings that mental imagery takes up cognitive resources, may help to explain why food cravings can be so disruptive: As we are imagining a specific food, much of our brain power is focused on that food, and we have a hard time with other tasks.”

Additional research illustrates how imagery can be used to defeat a food craving:

“The results of one experiment revealed that volunteers who had been craving a food reported reduced food cravings after they formed images of common sights (for example, they were asked to imagine the appearance of a rainbow) or smells (they were asked to imagine the smell of eucalyptus).” 

This is good news for the cognitive designer looking for specific tools for managing the effects of cravings. It also suggest a more fundamental insight – indulging in mental images burns significant cognitive resources.

In a later post I will explore the role of supernormal stimuli in creating cravings.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 23rd, 2010 at 8:47 am and is filed under Behavior Change, Cognitive Bias, Technique. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.