HEALTHY FOOD CHOICE: HOW ENVIRONMENT AND COGNITION DETERMINE WHAT WE EAT

HEALTHY FOOD CHOICE: HOW ENVIRONMENT AND COGNITION DETERMINE

WHAT WE EAT

D i s s e r t a t i o n

zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Dr. rer. nat.

im Fach Psychologie

eingereicht an der  

Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftlichen Fakultät II der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

von

Dipl.-Psych. Jutta Mata, geboren am 30. August 1978 in Berlin

Präsident der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Prof. Dr. Christoph Markschies

Dekan der Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftlichen Fakultät II

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Coy

1. Gutachten: Prof. Dr. Gerd Gigerenzer, Humboldt Universität & MPI Bildungsforschung
2. Gutachten: Prof. Dr. Elke van der Meer, Humboldt Universität
3. Gutachten: Prof. Dr. Peter Todd, Indiana University Bloomington

Tag der Verteidigung: 21. Januar 2008

Acknowledgments

First and foremost I want to thank my advisors, Peter Todd, and Sonia Lippke for their precious help, challenging questions and advice throughout the three years of this dissertation. Peter was an excellent, trusted, and very supportive mentor; his fascination for science and strange foods is contagious and made this dissertation an exciting endeavour. Sonia always made me think about the health psychology perspective on my research. She was an outstanding, extremely reliable and helpful advisor who at all times anticipated possible obstacles and offered solutions as well as chocolate.  

This work was conducted at the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. I am truly thankful to Gerd Gigerenzer for inviting me to work in this very stimulating, interdisciplinary, and friendly working environment. I am also grateful for the opportunity of being part of the International Max

Planck Research School LIFE and want to thank the directors of the LIFE research school Paul Baltes, Jacque Eccles, Ulman Lindenberger, and John Nesselroade for providing with many opportunities for additional training, feedback and discussions. I met fantastic people through LIFE, including Andreas Wilke, Jessica Garrett, Bettina von Helversen, Poldi Kuhl, Christina Röcke, and Christina Limbird with whom I spent innumerous days and nights at the office, the LIFE academies, and working in cafés, and who have been wonderful friends, housemates and travel companions. I especially want to thank Jacque for supporting my stay at her lab at the University of Michigan, her very warm welcome there and for her discussions and feedback that made my stay there a very productive one.

I am also indebted to Peter Todd for inviting me to work with him at the Indiana University in Bloomington, for showing me Bloomington campus life as well as connecting me with researchers worldwide. I also want to thank Peter and Anita Todd (and Imogen and Graham) for their generous hospitality during my numerous stays in Bloomington – I couldn’t have asked for more.  

I am grateful to Ralph Hertwig for inviting me to work at his lab at the University of Basel, and to Steffi Kurzenhäuser and Thorsten Pachur for their helpful insights and generous hospitality.

I would like to thank my dissertation committee for their unbureaucratic ways; Gerd Gigerenzer, Elke van der Meer, and Peter Todd for writing a review of my thesis and Jens Asendorpf for agreeing to be head of the committee.  

A big Thank You to my colleagues at the Center for Adaptive Behavior and

Cognition, especially Bettina von Helversen who discussed a trillion big and small (research) questions with me from her side of the office desk, and Benjamin Scheibehenne who was a Acknowledgments 2

splendid office mate in Bloomington and Berlin and a lot of fun to work with on the children’s preference prediction study. I also want to thank Monika for great advice and her kind support, Uwe Czienskowski for programming, and Gregor Caregnato, for running the experiments of the meat label study, as well as Christian Elsner who provided reliable technical support and sweets over the last years. I want to thank the members of the “ABCfood group”, Julia Schooler, Anja Dieckmann, and Lael Schooler, for their helpful feedback. Furthermore, I am grateful to all friends and colleagues who gave me feedback on previous versions of elements of this dissertation, namely, Edward Cokely, Wolfgang Gaissmaier, Mirta Galesic, Poldi Kuhl, Julian Marewski, Susanne Ramge, and Andreas Wilke – and especially to Anita Todd who critically and carefully edited every part of this dissertation.

Furthermore I am indebted for the precious help I received from my student assistants, Sylvia

Böhme, Linda Miesler, Vera Schneider and David Wisniewski, and my interns, Markus Wettstein, Berit Hoerner, Lisa Warner, and Franziska Hoffmann.  

I also want to thank my family and friends, especially Sue, Anna, Andreas, Jessica, Katrin, and Marscha who never lost trust in my abilities and comforted me during times of frustration. Finally, I want to thank Rui for his never ending encouragement, countless discussions, proofreading, advice on programming, coming up with the dissertation title, and most importantly, making life brighter beyond words.  

Deutsche Zusammenfassung

Die vorliegende Dissertation setzt sich mit Entscheidungen im Ernährungsbereich auseinander. Sie beschäftigt sich insbesondere damit, wie das Zusammenspiel von Umwelt und Kognition diese Entscheidungen beeinflusst. Im ersten Manuskript, “When Diets Last:

Lower Cognitive Complexity Increases Diet Adherence” wird die Bedeutung der kognitiven Komplexität von Ernährungsregeln für das Einhalten einer Diät untersucht. Diesem Projekt liegt die Annahme zugrunde, dass Diäten scheitern können, weil sie aus kognitiver

Perspektive zu komplex sind. Zum Beispiel können sich Diäthaltende nicht alle wichtigen Informationen merken oder verarbeiten. Der Einfluss von kognitiver Komplexität wurden aus zwei Blickwinkeln betrachtet: Zum einen aus der Umweltperspektive, in dem Essensregeln aus beliebten Diätbüchern bezüglich ihrer Komplexität analysiert wurden, zum anderen aus der subjektiven Perspektive von 1136 Diäthaltenden einer längsschnittlichen Onlinestudie.

Neben der wahrgenommenen Regelschwierigkeit verschiedener Diäten wurden weitere

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