What helps to form a healthy nutrition habit? Daily associations of intrinsic reward, anticipated regret, and self-efficacy with automaticity

Sally Di Maio; Jan Keller; Dominika Kwasnicka; Nina Knoll; Lena Sichert; Lena Fleig

doi:10.1016/j.appet.2022.106083

What helps to form a healthy nutrition habit? Daily associations of intrinsic reward, anticipated regret, and self-efficacy with automaticity

Appetite. 2022 Aug 1:175:106083. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2022.106083. Epub 2022 May 14.

Authors

Sally Di Maio¹, Jan Keller², Dominika Kwasnicka³, Nina Knoll⁴, Lena Sichert⁵, Lena Fleig⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Education and Psychology, Division Health Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, D-14195, Berlin, Germany. Electronic address: sally.dimaio@fu-berlin.de.
² Department of Education and Psychology, Division Health Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, D-14195, Berlin, Germany. Electronic address: jan.keller@fu.berlin.de.
³ Faculty of Psychology, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Aleksandra Ostrowskiego 30B, 53-238, Wroclaw, Poland; NHMRC Centre in Digital Technology to Transform Chronic Disease Outcomes, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, 5/ Exhibition Street, Melbourne, VIC, 3004, Australia. Electronic address: dom.kwasnicka@unimelb.edu.au.
⁴ Department of Education and Psychology, Division Health Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, D-14195, Berlin, Germany. Electronic address: nina.knoll@fu-berlin.de.
⁵ Department of Education and Psychology, Division Health Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, D-14195, Berlin, Germany. Electronic address: l.sichert@outlook.de.
⁶ Department of Psychology, MSB Medical School Berlin, Hochschule für Gesundheit und Medizin, Rüdesheimer Straße 50, 14197, Berlin, Germany. Electronic address: lena.fleig@medicalschool-berlin.de.

PMID: 35580819
DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2022.106083

Abstract

Background: High automaticity in healthy nutrition behaviors is related to long-term maintenance of these behaviors. Drawing upon theoretical frameworks of habit formation, proposed antecedents such as intrinsic reward, anticipated regret, and self-efficacy are important correlates of automaticity, but not much is known about their day-by-day relationships with automaticity in healthy nutrition behaviors. This study tested previous-day within-person (i.e., from one day to the next) and same-day within-person associations of intrinsic reward, anticipated regret, and self-efficacy with automaticity of a healthy nutrition behavior, for which participants attempted to form a new habit.

Methods: Secondary analyses of a randomized controlled trial with two planning intervention conditions including a longitudinal sample of n = 135 participants (age: M = 24.82 years; SD = 7.27) are reported. Participants formed a plan on a self-selected healthy nutrition behavior to become a new habit and were followed up over 12 weeks assessing daily levels of plan-specific intrinsic reward, anticipated regret, self-efficacy, and automaticity. Lagged multilevel models with 84 study days nested in participants estimated previous-day within-person, same-day within-person, and between-person relationships of intrinsic reward, anticipated regret, and self-efficacy with automaticity.

Findings: Regarding within-level relationships, higher-than-usual levels of intrinsic reward, anticipated regret, and self-efficacy of the same day but not of the previous day were associated with higher within-person automaticity. With respect to between-level relationships, higher between-levels (i.e., higher person mean levels across the study period) of intrinsic reward, anticipated regret, and self-efficacy were linked with higher automaticity.

Discussion: Findings point towards the potential to intervene on intrinsic reward, anticipated regret, and self-efficacy when aiming to promote a new healthy nutrition habit.

Keywords: Anticipated regret; Automaticity; Habit formation; Intrinsic reward; Nutrition; Self-efficacy.