Background. Little is known about the perception of salty taste in obese patients, especially after bariatric surgery. Therefore, the aim of this study was to analyse possible differences in salt detection thresholds and preferences for foods differing in salt content in obese persons before and after bariatric surgery with weight loss compared to non-obese individuals. Methods. Sodium chloride...

OBJECTIVE Low inhibitory control and strong hedonic response towards food are considered to contribute to overeating and obesity. Based on previous research, the present study aimed at examining the potentially crucial interplay between these two factors in terms of long-term weight loss in people with obesity. METHODS BMI, inhibitory control towards food, and food liking were assessed in obe...

Inspired by research showing that wanting (one's motivation to engage in an activity) often diverges from liking (one's enjoyment of the activity), this article details the development and validation of a new measure to examine the distinction between sexual wanting and liking within a relationship: the partner-specific sexual liking and wanting (PSSLW) scale. In Study 1, participants (N = 1145...

The global increase of cardiovascular diseases is linked to the shift towards unbalanced diets with increasing salt and fat intake. This has led to a growing consumers' interest in more balanced food products, which explains the growing number of health-related claims on food products (e.g., "low in salt" or "light"). Based on a within-subjects design, consumers (n = 129) evaluated the same che...

Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is glucose intolerance diagnosed during pregnancy. Previous work suggested that women with GDM showed exaggerated preferences for sweet taste, but data were limited to a single time point during pregnancy. This study longitudinally assessed sweet taste changes across pregnancy in women who developed GDM (n = 15) as compared with women with normal glucose tole...

The ventral pallidum (VP) is a key structure in brain mesocorticolimbic reward circuits that mediate "liking" reactions to sensory pleasures. Do firing patterns in VP actually code sensory pleasure? Strong evidence for hedonic coding requires showing that neural signals track positive increases in sensory pleasure or even reversals from bad to good. A useful test is the salt alliesthesia of phy...

Why do we enjoy listening to music that makes us sad? This question has puzzled music psychologists for decades, but the paradox of "pleasurable sadness" remains to be solved. Recent findings from a study investigating the enjoyment of sad films suggest that the positive relationship between felt sadness and enjoyment might be explained by feelings of being moved (Hanich et al., 2014). The aim ...

Food preferences and habits learned at a young age can influence adulthood dietary patterns and weight, but the mechanism remains to be elucidated. We investigated the effect of perceived recollections of early food experiences on current liking for those foods by 670 college students. We showed that the perceived recollection of frequent consumption of foods in childhood was significantly rela...

Conversation is a fundamental human experience that is necessary to pursue intrapersonal and interpersonal goals across myriad contexts, relationships, and modes of communication. In the current research, we isolate the role of an understudied conversational behavior: question-asking. Across 3 studies of live dyadic conversations, we identify a robust and consistent relationship between questio...