TY - JOUR
T1 - Objective physiological measurements but not subjective reports moderate the effect of hunger on choice behavior
AU - Shabat-Simon, Maytal
AU - Shuster, Anastasia
AU - Sela, Tal
AU - Levy, Dino J.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Shabat-Simon, Shuster, Sela and Levy.
PY - 2018/5/23
Y1 - 2018/5/23
N2 - Hunger is a powerful driver of human behavior, and is therefore of great interest to the study of psychology, economics, and consumer behavior. Assessing hunger levels in experiments is often biased, when using self-report methods, or complex, when using blood tests. We propose a novel way of objectively measuring subjects' levels of hunger by identifying levels of alpha-amylase (AA) enzyme in their saliva samples. We used this measure to uncover the effect of hunger on different types of choice behaviors. We found that hunger increases risk-seeking behavior in a lottery-choice task, modifies levels of vindictiveness in a social decision-making task, but does not have a detectible effect on economic inconsistency in a budget-set choice task. Importantly, these findings were moderated by AA levels and not by self-report measures. We demonstrate the effects hunger has on choice behavior and the problematic nature of subjective measures of physiological states, and propose to use reliable and valid biologically based methods to overcome these problems.
AB - Hunger is a powerful driver of human behavior, and is therefore of great interest to the study of psychology, economics, and consumer behavior. Assessing hunger levels in experiments is often biased, when using self-report methods, or complex, when using blood tests. We propose a novel way of objectively measuring subjects' levels of hunger by identifying levels of alpha-amylase (AA) enzyme in their saliva samples. We used this measure to uncover the effect of hunger on different types of choice behaviors. We found that hunger increases risk-seeking behavior in a lottery-choice task, modifies levels of vindictiveness in a social decision-making task, but does not have a detectible effect on economic inconsistency in a budget-set choice task. Importantly, these findings were moderated by AA levels and not by self-report measures. We demonstrate the effects hunger has on choice behavior and the problematic nature of subjective measures of physiological states, and propose to use reliable and valid biologically based methods to overcome these problems.
KW - Alpha-amylase
KW - Choice consistency
KW - Hunger
KW - Physiological state
KW - Risk preferences
KW - Ultimatum game
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85047419973&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00750
DO - 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00750
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C2 - 29875715
AN - SCOPUS:85047419973
SN - 1664-1078
VL - 9
JO - Frontiers in Psychology
JF - Frontiers in Psychology
IS - MAY
M1 - 750
ER -