Chapter 5 126 2 The description of the problem situations “Experiencing cravings” versus “After giving in to cravings”; 3 The described emotions in the problem situations; It is possible that “After giving in to cravings” appealed to more participants because the miserable feeling once the binge is over, the anger, the regret, the disappointment about one’s own behaviour, shame may be more universal among emotional eaters than “Experiencing cravings”, because here stress is the described emotion that gives rise to cravings, while there are also other negative emotions such as fear, anger, annoyance and loneliness, which can be the prelude to experiencing and giving in to cravings [69]; 4 The appearance of the personas in terms of (cultural) background, education, and socioeconomic status. Anita, middle-aged, is a poorly educated woman. She has an anxious nature – she suffers from stress because of financial worries and concerns about her family. Lisanne, representing ‘after giving in to cravings’, is a well educated, good-looking young woman); 5 The order of presentation of the problem situations to the participants (first persona Lisanne and then Anita, while the order of ‘experiencing cravings’ and ‘giving in to cravings’ is the other way around). Participants may not have recognized the persona ‘experiencing cravings’ as good as ‘after giving in to cravings’ because the appearance of that persona was possibly less appealing. Participants looked at the picture and perhaps had their thoughts ready. A study by Salminen and colleagues showed that “[...] a smile enhances the perceived similarity with the persona, similar personas are more liked, and that likability increases the willingness to use a persona [77-78]. In follow-up research Salminen added to this that personas with happy pictures are perceived as more extroverted, agreeable, open, conscientious, and emotionally stable [79]. In principle, both problem situations should be well recognised because the emotional eater experiences both problem situations. If an emotional eater suffers from cravings and gives in to them, then usually the phase ‘after giving in to cravings’ is also lived through [21, 40]. An exception to this is when the emotional eater would have been able to resist the cravings. However, it is not known which factors weighed more heavily for the participants because they were not surveyed on those aspects. It is therefore quite possible that the difference in appearance and presentation of the two personas could affect the internal validity of the study. To increase the degree of persona recognition, it is important that preferences of participants are not affected by attributes other than those directly related to the specific characteristics of the emotional eater, and the proto-typical problem situations she can encounter.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjY0ODMw