The reason why you eat too many snacks may become clear.
Distractions while eating can leave you feeling unsatisfied, but you may be able to make up for it by eating more food later, according to a study published Thursday in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. It has been found.
“Overconsumption is often caused by a lack of self-control,” says study lead author Stephen Lee Murphy of Ghent University in Belgium. “However, our findings suggest that overconsumption is also often driven by a simple human desire to reach a certain level of enjoyment from an activity. When distractions get in the way, , we may try to compensate by consuming more.”
Murphy's team first focused on overconsumption of food. Before eating lunch, we asked 122 people, mostly young women aged 18 to 24, how much they expected to enjoy their lunch.
They were then instructed to eat in one of three conditions: no distraction, moderate distraction (watching a video), and high distraction (playing Tetris).
After lunch, participants shared how much they ate, how much they enjoyed the meal, how satisfied they were, and whether they wanted more satisfaction. They also recorded snacking later in the day.
Participants who ate while distracted reported less enjoyment and satisfaction, an increased desire for more satisfaction, and more subsequent snacking.
Researchers call this phenomenon “hedonic compensation.” In other words, they compensate for lost pleasure by seeking additional satisfaction elsewhere.
Murphy's team theorized that this effect goes beyond food and is seen when people are distracted while watching a movie or playing a game. As a result, they may be more likely to engage in additional media consumption, such as checking social media.
Murphy and his colleagues plan to replicate and confirm the existence of the hedonic compensation effect in order to devise ways to counter overconsumption.
“By understanding the key drivers of hedonic overconsumption, we can develop strategies to prevent it from occurring,” Murphy said.