I love chips and (h)ate them too: the role of ambivalence and contextual cues on attitudinally based eating behaviour / Me encantan las patatas fritas,las como y (también) las odio: el papel de la ambivalencia y de las claves contextuales en el comportamiento alimentario basado en la actitud

Abstract

Although past work proposed ambivalence as moderating the consistency between attitudes and behaviours, empirical evidence is mixed. We address this matter by taking into account social influence processes and observing actual eating behaviour. We predicted that less ambivalent attitudes are more consistent with behaviours independently of context cues. In two studies, we first evaluated participants’ ambivalence towards the target food. A week later we observed their eating behaviour (Study 1), and analysed the influence of context cues on it (Study 2). Results showed that only less ambivalent attitudes are good predictors of actual behaviour. Importantly, context cues only influenced behaviour among individuals with ambivalent attitudes.