46 Food Choice
loss (Schifter and Ajzen, 1985) and healthy eating (Povey et al., 2000), and
in addition highlights the importance of past behavior and habit in pre-
dicting a number of different aspects of eating, including seafood con-
sumption and the intake of sweetened drinks (e.g., Honkanen, Olsen, and
Verplanken, 2005; Kremers et al., 2007). The social norms component of
these models has consistently failed to predict eating behavior.
Some studies have explored the impact of adding extra variables to the
standard framework described within the social cognition models. For
example, Shepherd and Stockley (1987) examined the predictors of fat intake
and included a measure of nutritional knowledge, but found that this was
not associated with either their measure of attitudes or their participants’
behavior. Povey et al. (2000) included additional measures of descriptive
norms (e.g., “To what extent do you think the following groups eat a healthy
diet?”) and of perceived social support (e.g., “To what extent do you think
the following groups would be supportive if you tried to eat a healthy diet?”)
but found that these variables did not add anything to the core cognitions
of the TPB. Research has also examined the impact of accessing the indi-
vidual’s hedonic responses to food with a focus on beliefs about the sensory
properties of the food concerned. The results, however, have been contradictory
in this area. For example, Tuorila-Ollikainen, Lahteenmaki, and Salovaara
(1986) asked participants to rate their beliefs about low-salt bread both before
and after tasting some bread, and reported that the posttasting hedonic rat-
ings predicted eating behavior above their measure of attitudes. In contrast,
Tuorila (1987) asked participants to rate milk which varied in its fat content
for its hedonic properties and reported that these ratings of the sensory aspects
of the food did not add anything to the basic cognitive model. Shepherd (1989)
provided a review of these studies and suggested that the hedonic responses
to food may be more important if the food is novel than if it is familiar.
The attitudinal research described so far conceptualizes individuals as
holding either positive or negative views towards a given object. In terms
of food choice it is assumed that people either like or dislike certain foods
and that this value-laden attitude predicts food intake. Recent studies, how-
ever, have also explored the role of ambivalence in predicting behavior
(Thompson, Zanna, and Griffin, 1995) and this has been applied to food
choice (Sparks et al., 2001). Ambivalence has been defined in a variety of
different ways. For example, Breckler (1994) defined it as “a conflict aroused
by competing evaluative predispositions,” and Emmons (1996) defined it
as “an approach–avoidance conflict – wanting but at the same time not
wanting the same goal object.” Central to all definitions of ambivalence is