Abstract
Background:
Our psychophysiological stress responses generally serve adaptive purposes such as promoting the use of simple habits over complex goal-directed behavior. Nevertheless, such a preference for habits under stress may, in vulnerable individuals, constitute a risk factor for psychopathology. For example, stress often precedes emotional eating and binge eating episodes, and is reported by people with a substance addiction as a primary reason for relapsing.
Methods:
Here we report on the development of a new paradigm that aims to distinguish goal-directed from habitual behavior utilizing actual eating during reward learning and as outcome devaluation procedure. Study 1 experimentally tests three versions of the paradigm (n = 20 per task version); Study 2 examines whether exposure to an acute stressor results in a preference for habitual behavior relative to a non-stress control group (n = 20 per group), and whether this is linked to glucocorticoid and adrenergic stress responses.
Results and conclusions:
Results from both studies and their implications for an empirically supported method of measuring goal-directed versus habitual behavior in future stress studies will be discussed.
Our psychophysiological stress responses generally serve adaptive purposes such as promoting the use of simple habits over complex goal-directed behavior. Nevertheless, such a preference for habits under stress may, in vulnerable individuals, constitute a risk factor for psychopathology. For example, stress often precedes emotional eating and binge eating episodes, and is reported by people with a substance addiction as a primary reason for relapsing.
Methods:
Here we report on the development of a new paradigm that aims to distinguish goal-directed from habitual behavior utilizing actual eating during reward learning and as outcome devaluation procedure. Study 1 experimentally tests three versions of the paradigm (n = 20 per task version); Study 2 examines whether exposure to an acute stressor results in a preference for habitual behavior relative to a non-stress control group (n = 20 per group), and whether this is linked to glucocorticoid and adrenergic stress responses.
Results and conclusions:
Results from both studies and their implications for an empirically supported method of measuring goal-directed versus habitual behavior in future stress studies will be discussed.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 47-47 |
| Journal | Psychoneuroendocrinology |
| Volume | 71 |
| Issue number | Suppl. |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2016 |
| Externally published | Yes |