Investigators of appetite for food have been tricked into the twin illusions that ratings of the disposition to eat are subjective and amounts eaten at meals are objective. The reality is the opposite. Making a mark on a continuous or broken line specified by two levels of what the rater uses as a single concept is the objective performance of a quantitative judgment. In contrast, the amount of...

There are Various motives that some of them can help to resolving interpersonal conflicts and others may prevent its resolve. According to the regulation style theory, the motivation for change, i.e. the desire to come out of the current state of conflict, can help to conflict resolution, but there is an opposite motivation, one that prevents the resolution of the conflict, and it is the motiva...

Cues associated with food availability and consumption can evoke desire for food, sometimes leading to excessive intake. We have found, however, that food cues acquire incentive motivational properties (the ability to attract and to serve as conditional reinforcers) in some individuals (sign-trackers), but not others (goal-trackers). We asked, therefore, whether rats that are attracted (attribu...

Clara Marie Davis's Montréal description of what she titled “The self-selection of diets by young children” was destined to become both a CMAJ citation classic and a fountainhead of argument, discussion and reinterpretation for everyone hoping to untangle the modern gnarl where children's appetites, food choices and health collide. What Davis claimed to have found changed the world of child fee...

At the end of a day of papers covering almost the Seven Ages of Man it is fitting that the last of them should deal with the problem of feeding elderly people. Fortunately I am not called upon to give a scientific treatise on the part played by nutrition in the ageing processes because our knowledge is lamentably small. I t is, however, as important to assess the effect of growing old, with all...

Wars are increasingly frequent, and the trend has been steadily upward since 1870. The main tradition of Western political and philosophical thought suggests that extensive economic globalization and democratization over this period should have reduced appetites for war far below their current level. This view is clearly incomplete: at best, confounding factors are at work. Trade and democracy ...