Physiology & Behavior 182 (2017) 101–106

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Physiology & Behavior

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/physbeh

Explicit wanting and liking for palatable snacks are differentially affected by MARK
change in physiological state, and differentially related to salivation and
hunger
Richard J. Stevenson⁎, Heather M. Francis, Tuki Attuquayefio, Candice Ockert
Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Incentive salience theory (IST) suggests that ‘wanting’ and liking are dissociable processes. We argue that explicit
Liking measures of wanting in humans can reflect the impact of implicit ‘wanting’ as envisaged by IST, suggesting that
Wanting dissociations should also be evident for explicit judgments of wanting and liking. To test this, participants were
Palatability asked to make ratings of these variables for 8 palatable snack foods – and in a related test salivation rate was also
Human
assessed. Participants viewed and sniffed each snack food and rated wanting, and then sampled it and rated
Ingestive behavior
liking and whether they wanted more of it. Following a lunch eaten to satiety, and composed in part of half of the
palatable snack foods, participants repeated their evaluations of the snack foods (and salivation rate). Liking
changed less across lunch than wanting and want more ratings, the last-mentioned changing the most. Change in
liking was associated with change in salivation rate, independent of wanting, and change in wanting was as-
sociated with change in hunger independent of liking. We argue these dissociations are consistent with ‘wanting’
influencing explicit wanting, and that want more ratings may represent a ‘purer’ measure of IST ‘wanting’.

1. Introduction
The motivational basis of ingestive behavior is important to un-
derstand as its dysfunction may contribute to excess weight gain and
disordered eating (e.g., [11,24,33]). An important account of motiva-
tion, developed in animals, is incentive salience theory (IST; [2,28]).
Two processes are central to IST. The first is wanting (sometimes re-
ferred to as desire to eat and more distantly perhaps, hedonic hunger),
namely the drive to obtain biologically significant goals that occurs
when a learned cue associated with that goal is perceived in the pre-
sence of an appropriate physiological state. The second is liking, namely
the reward process that ensues when the goal object is consumed. While
translating the IST notion of liking from animals to humans has gen-
erally been straightforward, the translation of wanting has been more
problematic as outlined below (e.g., see [26,36]). Complications have
also arisen in attempts to show dissociations between wanting and
liking in humans (e.g., [15,16]), even though these have been demon-
strated in animals (e.g., [38]) and are seemingly evident in humans
(e.g., wanting something that no longer provides reward). Here we
demonstrate a novel, simple and powerful means of dissociating
wanting and liking in the context of food.
Humans and rats share much of the same basic neural motivational
and reward structures. The complications ensue for IST because humans
are capable of explicitly reporting on states that seem to parallel those
that govern a rat's behavior. Thus, when a food deprived rat bar presses
more frequently to earn chow, relative to a sated rat, it is easy to see
this in human terms using concepts such as wanting and desire –terms
that are widely used in the human eating literature (e.g., see [34]).
However, there are significant concerns over such parallels between
particular human states of mind (i.e., wanting food) and animal beha-
vior in the laboratory [36]. As the authors of IST note, wanting in an-
imals is preconscious and on this basis, they claim that the parallel state
in humans is also preconscious [3]. Consequently, any similarity be-
tween wanting in animals and explicit mental states in humans may be
incorrect. This has led to the study of two forms of wanting in humans –
implicit ‘wanting’ (often presented in single quotes, as here, to indicate
the difference from colloquial usage), which arguably parallels the
preconscious form studied in rats, and explicit wanting, which refers to
mental states such as wanting and desire. This distinction has spawned
two forms of measurement, one involving implicit measures to tap
‘wanting’ (e.g., [13]) and the other self-reports to tap explicit wanting
(e.g., [4]). Our focus here is with dissociating explicit wanting from
liking - as explicit measures dominate the human IST literature and are
easy to assess [26].

⁎
Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW2109, Australia.
E-mail address: dick.stevenson@mq.edu.au (R.J. Stevenson).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2017.10.007
Received 10 February 2017; Received in revised form 7 September 2017; Accepted 6 October 2017
Available online 13 October 2017
0031-9384/ © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
R.J. Stevenson et al.
IST defines ‘wanting’ as state dependent [2,28]. Thus, viewing a cue
to food in different states (e.g., hungry vs. sated) should generate sig-
nificant shifts in ‘wanting’ and presumably the same applies to explicit
wanting too. Hedonic reactions to food also change with alterations in
physiological state - alliesthesia [6] – as well as more specifically for
foods that have just been eaten relative to those that have not – sensory
specific satiety [30]. The dissociation we wish to test is that liking will
change to a significantly smaller degree than explicit wanting, fol-
lowing a relevant change in physiological state (i.e., energy depletion to
repletion).
There are two reasons for thinking that liking will change less with
state than wanting. First, theoretically, wanting for food should be
terminated by the change from energy depletion to repletion, thus al-
lowing a shift in goals towards other targets (e.g., satisfying thirst). Any
concurrent change in hedonic responsiveness should be less dramatic
(i.e., alliesthesia and sensory-specific satiety – more below), because
large shifts in liking across a meal would be maladaptive. This is be-
cause they could later adversely affect food choice, as recalling end of
meal ‘disliking’ could impair consumption for a food that was actually
safe, nutritious and initially palatable. Second, empirically, there is
already some evidence favouring a dissociation between ‘wanting’ and
liking after a change in state. This has been observed using measures of
implicit ‘wanting’ and explicit liking [12], but differences solely based
on explicit wanting and liking are also evident. Finlayson et al., (2008)
reported ratings of wanting and liking at the start and end of a pizza
meal, and while no change measure was statistically tested (i.e., change
in liking over lunch vs. change in wanting over lunch), the means
suggest a much greater change in wanting for the pizza relative to liking
for it.
The closest to a direct test of our current hypothesis was reported by
Attuquafeio et al., [1]. They measured explicit wanting and liking for a
set of snack foods prior to and after a filling lunch. The study found that
the decline in explicit wanting across lunch was larger than the decline
in liking, and that the magnitude of this difference was moderated by
how frequently the participant consumed foods rich in saturated fat and
added sugar - this being the main focus of the study. While these results
are encouraging, they are also problematic. This is because lunch in-
cluded some of the same items that were also present in the snack foods
evaluated before and after the meal. This may have acted to reduce the
degree of change in liking for the snack foods, relative to changes in
explicit wanting, because of dilution of sensory specific satiety (i.e.,
occurring for some but not all snack foods). If both sensory specific
satiety and alliesthesia effects had occurred, then changes in liking for
the snack foods may have been far greater, thus potentially equalling
changes in explicit wanting. A better test would be to determine the
impact on liking of alliesthesia and sensory specific satiety, and then see
if changes in explicit wanting still exceed these effects alone and to-
gether.
The design of the current study was based upon Attuquafeio et al.,
[1]. As briefly described above, it involved evaluating palatable snack
foods (i.e., assessing wanting on sight/smell, and liking and wanting
more after tasting), eating a meal to repletion and then re-evaluating
the same snack foods again. A key design change was to specifically
determine changes in liking from alliesthesia alone (i.e., for snack foods
not eaten at lunch) from those for alliesthesia and sensory specific sa-
tiety combined (i.e., for snack foods eaten at lunch). This would ensure
more careful control of state-dependent changes in liking. In addition,
we also tested for other evidence of a dissociation between explicit
wanting and liking. First, we measured salivation rate towards the
palatable snack foods, both before and after lunch, to establish whether
changes in salivation rate were better explained by changes in liking for
the same snack food or by changes in explicit wanting. This particular
comparison has not been made before, although salivation rate has
been shown (albeit inconsistently) to be linked to palatability [23,37]
and to hunger too [23,37]. Second, we also examined whether changes
in hunger were related to changes in explicit wanting, on the basis that
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Physiology & Behavior 182 (2017) 101–106
changes in hunger should track changes in physiological state.
2. Method
2.1. Design overview
The study used a fully-within subject design. Participants viewed
and sniffed palatable snack foods (both sweet and savoury, and in-
cluding items to be eaten at lunch and not eaten at lunch) and made
ratings of how much they wanted to consume them now. A morsel of
each snack food was then consumed followed by ratings of liking and
wanting more. Salivation rate to the same foods was also measured in a
separate test. All participants then consumed lunch, after which the
same evaluations were repeated for the same palatable snack foods, as
well as a second salivation rate test.
2.2. Participants
Thirty-six participants, 18 male, took part for course credit. Mean
age was 19.3 years (range 18–25) and participants ranged from under-
weight to obese (range 16.6 to 31.6), with 25 falling in the normal
range (overall sample M = 21.9). One participant reported currently
taking stimulant medication for ADHD and this person's data was ex-
cluded from the analysis leaving 35 cases. All participants provided
written informed consent and the protocol was approved by the
Macquarie University Human Research Ethics Committee.
2.3. Materials
The evaluation test stimuli consisted of: (1) one cheddar cheese
cube (Mainland, approximately 1cm3); (2) one cheese and bacon ball
(Fritolay); (3) one BBQ flavoured Pringle; (4) one salt and vinegar
flavoured Pringle; (5) one piece of caramel fudge (Woolworths, ap-
proximately 1cm3); (6) one TimeTam bite (a chocolate covered mini-
biscuit); (7) one Malteser (Mars); and (8) one vanilla wafer mini-biscuit
(Woolworths).
Lunch consisted of three courses. The starter, presented in two
bowls, was composed of two savoury snack foods selected (counter-
balanced across participants) from the four used in the evaluation test.
The amounts were selected so as to be broadly equivalent in volume
(34 g of cheese cubes [578KJ]; 10 g of cheese and bacon balls [230KJ];
17 g of BBQ Pringles [374KJ]; 17 g of salt and vinegar Pringles
[374KJ]). Main course was either beef (1340KJ) or vegetarian
(1140KJ) lasagne (Woolworths; both 260 g). Desert, presented in two
bowls, involved two sweet snack foods selected (counterbalanced
across participants) from the four used in the evaluation test. The
amounts were again selected so as to be broadly equivalent in volume
(34 g of caramel fudge [544KJ]; 34 g of Tim Tam bites [782KJ]; 31 g of
Maltesers [713KJ]; 31 g of vanilla wafer mini-biscuits [589KJ]).
2.4. Procedure
All participants were asked to breakfast as per normal, and then
refrain from eating in the 3 h before testing so as to arrive hungry for
lunch (i.e., arriving between 11 am and 1.30 pm). Participants were
told that they could drink water in this period but not caloric beverages.
All participants reported complying with these instructions.
Participants were asked to rate how hungry, full, thirsty, happy, sad,
alert and relaxed they were on 120 mm line rating scales (anchors Not
at all to Very) – hereafter termed the rating set (note that only hunger
and fullness data are described here as the remaining ratings did not
reveal anything of interest). The first part of the pre-lunch evaluation
test then commenced. Participants had two pieces of pre-weighed
dental wadding placed around their submaxillary and sublingual ducts
(i.e., one piece on either side of the floor of the mouth under the
tongue), as well as a further two pieces around the parotid ducts (i.e.,
R.J. Stevenson et al.
one piece each side of the upper jaw, between gum and cheek). The
length of time (in secs) this wadding was in place (from the last piece
going in to the last piece coming out) was recorded for each participant.
The participant was then asked to go through a specific sequence of
actions for each of the 8 snack foods, which were presented in rando-
mised order. For each piece of snack food, the experimenter instructed
the participant to look at it twice, sniff it twice and touch it twice,
before moving on to the next item. After all 8 food items had been
examined in this way the wadding was removed for later weighing, and
participants were asked to rinse their mouths with water.
The second of the pre-lunch evaluation tests then commenced.
Participants were presented with a new set of the same eight snack
foods in a different random order. Starting with the first item, partici-
pants were asked to look at it carefully twice and then judge how much
they wanted to eat it using a 120 mm line rating scale (anchors Not at
all and A lot). They were then asked to consume the sample after which
they made two further ratings, both again on 120 mm line rating scales:
(1) How much do you like this food? (anchors Not at all and A lot); and
(2) How much more of this food would you like to eat now? (anchors
None and A lot). Following a water rinse, participants then repeated
this process for each of the remaining snack food items.
Before starting lunch, participants completed their second rating set
(i.e., hunger, fullness etc). Participants were then instructed to eat until
they were comfortably full and told that all uneaten food would be
thrown away. Ad libitum chilled water was available throughout lunch.
First, they were served the starter, which consisted of two bowls each
containing a different savoury snack (see Materials). Five minutes was
provided to consume this food. They were then given 10 mins to con-
sume their choice of beef or vegetarian lasagne. This was then followed
by desert, which consisted of two bowls each containing a different
sweet snack (see Materials), again with 5 mins available for this phase.
Participants were allowed to read magazines (content screened to avoid
any eating-related or upsetting material) while they consumed lunch.
All uneaten food was removed for later weighing.
Immediately after completing a third rating set (i.e., hunger, full-
ness etc), participants undertook a repeat of the two-part evaluation
test. This was conducted in an identical manner to the first evaluation
test, starting with the salivation rate component and then followed by
the evaluation part - as described in detail above. Presentation orders
for the snack food items on both tests was identical to that used for each
participant on the pre-lunch test. After completing both tests and a final
rating set, participants were asked to fill in a brief biographical measure
(including medical-related dietary issues; eating disorders, diabetes,
medications that can affect appetite etc). All participants were then
weighed and had their heights measured - both without shoes.
2.5. Analysis
Hunger and fullness data were analysed using t-tests (correcting for
multiple comparisons; alpha set at 0.05/4), as we were only interested
in specific comparisons so as to determine if the state-related manip-
ulation (i.e., lunch) had been effective.
For the evaluation test, which was conducted twice, once before and
once after lunch, each participant sampled eight snack foods. Of these
eight foods, four were sweet and four savoury, and of the four sweet,
two were eaten at lunch and two were not - as with the four savoury
foods, two being eaten at lunch and two not. The assignment of the four
sweet and four savoury snack foods to each of these cells of the design
was fully counterbalanced across participants, and for this reason we
formed four categories of snack food: (1) sweet and experienced at
lunch; (2) sweet and not experienced at lunch; (3) savoury and ex-
perienced at lunch; and (4) savoury and not experienced at lunch. Each
of these snack food categories had three associated ratings (wanting,
liking, want more), with these ratings obtained before and after lunch.
Thus, in total, each participant had 24 data points available for the
evaluation test analysis. In addition to these four within-subject factors
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Physiology & Behavior 182 (2017) 101–106
(State - pre-lunch vs. post-lunch; Evaluation type - Wanting vs. Liking vs.
Want more; Exposure - Snack foods eaten at lunch vs. Not eaten at
lunch; Taste - Sweet vs. Savoury snacks), two further variables were
included in the analysis. The first was gender, as this might affect he-
donic responses to the snacks for several reasons (e.g., greater re-
straint). The second, which was included as a covariate, was the
amount of energy consumed at lunch (following Z-transformation).
These data and their residuals were normally distributed and so they
were analysed using a mixed-design ANCOVA (SPSS 24, GLM com-
mand).
Participants saliva was collected over the whole period of the first
pre-lunch evaluation test, which lasted 2 mins and 26 s (SD = 44.6 s),
and over the whole period of the first post-lunch evaluation test, which
lasted 2 mins and 2 s (SD = 34.6 s). Pre- and post salivation rate data
(i.e., grams of saliva produced per minute) and their difference score
(Post - Pre) were not suitable for parametric analysis as these data were
skewed and kurtotic (all Z's > 3). Consequently, these data were
analysed non-parametrically.
Finally, to establish whether changes (all involving Post - Pre sub-
traction) in liking, wanting and wanting more on the evaluation test
were differentially related to changes in salivation rate, hunger and
fullness across lunch, a series of correlational analyses were performed.
For the tests involving changes in salivation rate Spearman's rho was
used, with Pearson's r used for the remaining variables. Partial corre-
lations (Spearman or Pearson) were then calculated to see if any
identified relationship with either wanting or liking was still significant
after controlling for the other variable (i.e., liking or wanting, respec-
tively).
3. Results
3.1. Lunch
To confirm that participants underwent a change in state, we ex-
amined both their energy intake data, and self-reports of hunger and
fullness, across the meal.
All participants consumed lunch, with a mean overall intake of
2404KJ (SD = 594; range = 1445–3371). This was composed of a
mean intake of 599KJ for the savoury starter (SD = 218;
range = 183–978), a mean intake of 998KJ for the lasagne (SD = 247;
range = 400–1286) and a mean intake of 806KJ for the sweet dessert
(SD = 334; range = 61–1500).
Hunger ratings remained stable from the first (M = 69.4;
SD = 21.8) to the second rating (M = 63.6; SD = 27.6), but decreased
significantly after lunch (M = 11.8; SD = 13.7; 2nd vs. 3rd rating,
paired sample t-test, t(34) = 11.47, p < 0.013), then remained stable
to the end of the experiment (M = 10.3; SD = 15.0). Fullness ratings
increased from the first (M = 29.5; SD = 20.9) to the second rating
(M = 47.0; SD = 24.1; 1st vs. 2nd rating, paired sample t-test, t(34)
= 6.08, p < 0.013), and increased further following lunch (M = 91.4;
SD = 28.4; 2nd vs. 3rd rating, paired sample t-test, t(34) = 9.73,
p < 0.013) and then remained stable to end of the study (M = 102.4;
SD = 19.9). Thus, participants felt hungrier and less full at the first set
of evaluation tests before lunch than they did at the second set after
lunch.
3.2. Evaluation test
The analysis of the wanting, liking and want more ratings from the
pre and post-lunch evaluation test were analysed using a five-way
mixed design ANCOVA, with State (pre-lunch vs. post-lunch),
Evaluation type (Wanting vs. Liking vs. Want more), Exposure (Snack
foods eaten at lunch vs. Not eaten at lunch) and Taste (Sweet vs.
Savoury snacks) as the within factors and Gender as the between factor
and energy intake at lunch as the covariate. Significant main effects and
interactions are detailed in Table 1.
R.J. Stevenson et al.
Table 1
Main effects and interactions from the analysis of the pre- and post-lunch evaluation test
data.
Effect F(dfs) = p<
State F(1,32) = 164.89 0.001
State by Evaluation type F(2,64) = 18.43 0.001
Evaluation type F(2,64) = 71.98 0.001
State by Exposure F(1,32) = 4.90 0.05
Evaluation type by Exposure F(2,64) = 6.16 0.005
State by Taste F(1,32) = 23.36 0.001
Fig. 1. Mean (and standard error) liking, wanting and want more ratings for a set of
palatable snack foods obtained prior to and after a filling lunch. Changes in all three
rating types across lunch were significant, with changes in wanting significantly ex-
ceeding changes in liking, and with changes in wanting more, significantly exceeding
changes in liking and wanting.
Not surprisingly, there was a main effect of State (see Table 1), with
all ratings reported as lower following lunch (M = 38.0/120;
SD = 13.2) than before lunch (M = 66.7/120; SD = 12.6). Im-
portantly, this was qualified by an interaction with Evaluation type (see
Table 1), which is illustrated in Fig. 1. Here it can be seen that liking
ratings declined substantially less across lunch (M change = − 20.5;
SD = 15.0) than either wanting ratings (M change = − 29.0;
p = 0.003; SD = 18.4) or want more ratings (M change = − 36.7;
p < 0.001; SD = 15.6). The change in want more ratings also ex-
ceeded that of the wanting ratings (p = 0.004). This suggests that
evaluations of wanting based just upon viewing, smelling and touching
a palatable snack food, are more sensitive to physiological state than
evaluations of liking based upon actually consuming it.
In addition to these findings (and a main effect of Evaluation type),
three further effects were obtained. First, State interacted with
Exposure (see Table 1), so collapsing across all evaluation types, ratings
fell more for snack foods that were eaten at lunch (M change = − 31.0;
SD = 15.1) relative to those not eaten at lunch (M change = − 26.4;
SD = 15.2). Second, Exposure also interacted with Evaluation type (see
Table 1), with little difference between snack foods that had and had
not been experienced at lunch on liking (M difference = 0.8;
SD = 14.5) and want more (M difference = 0.2; SD = 13.4) ratings,
but with a larger difference for wanting (M difference [had minus not
had] = − 4.1; SD = 14.7). That is snack foods not consumed at lunch
tended to be wanted more, noting that this interaction was not qualified
Physiology & Behavior 182 (2017) 101–106
Partial eta-
squared =
0.84
0.37
0.69
0.13
0.16
0.42
Fig. 2. Scatter plot of change in salivation rate against change in liking, for the palatable
snack foods, with these measures being obtained before and after a filling lunch.
by State (F = 0.31). Finally, there was an interaction between State and
Taste (see Table 1), with all evaluations of the sweet foods falling more
across lunch (M change = −34.2; SD = 18.1) than for savoury foods
(M = − 23.3; SD = 15.1). That is state had a larger impact on the
evaluation of sweet foods than on savoury foods across all ratings.
Participants median salivation rate was 0.46 g/min prior to lunch
and 0.53 g/min after lunch. This difference was significant (Wilcoxon
test; Z = 3.01, p = 0.003) indicating that salivation rate on the post
lunch evaluation test was generally greater than on the pre lunch test.
We then examined whether the change in salivation rate across lunch
was associated with changes in liking, wanting or wanting more ratings
across lunch. Neither changes in wanting (rho = 0.05) nor wanting
more (rho = 0.09) were associated with changes in salivation rate, but
changes in liking were (rho(35) = 0.36, p = 0.036) – see Fig. 2. We
then examined whether this relationship would still be significant if
changes in wanting and wanting more were partialled out. The corre-
lation remained significant (rhop(31) = 0.39, p = 0.026). These find-
ings indicate that where liking changed little across lunch, salivation
rate tended to be larger post-lunch, relative to pre-lunch - independent
of changes in wanting and wanting more.
We also examined if change in hunger and fullness across lunch
were correlated with changes in wanting, liking, wanting more and
salivation rate. There were no associations with changes in fullness
across lunch, but changes in hunger were associated with changes in
wanting (r(35) = 0.41, p < 0.02 – see Fig. 3) and in wanting more (r
(35) = 0.49, p < 0.005) but not with liking (p = 0.24) or salivation
rate (p = 0.29). Again, we checked to see if the two associations be-
tween changes in wanting (and wanting more) and hunger would still
be significant after partialling out changes in liking. They were (rp(32)
= 0.45, p < 0.01 [wanting]; rp(32) = 0.50, p < 0.005 [wanting
more]), indicating that greater reductions in hunger across lunch were
associated with greater reductions in wanting across lunch, in-
dependent of reported changes in liking.
4. Discussion
Differentiating explicit wanting and liking has attracted consider-
able research attention [26]. For ingestive behavior there are relatively
few examples of specific dissociations between explicit wanting and
liking, these either being in specific populations (obese; [25]) or just
using pictorial representations of food [5]. In the experiment reported
here, we aimed to determine if explicit wanting declined more fol-
lowing a change in physiological state (energy depletion to repletion)
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R.J. Stevenson et al.
Fig. 3. Scatter plot of change in wanting for the palatable snack foods across lunch
against change in hunger across lunch.
than liking, when these evaluations were made for palatable snack
foods sampled before and after lunch in healthy participants. Irre-
spective of whether the snack foods had or had not formed part of
lunch, changes in liking were smaller than participants reported
wanting to consume them. As part of the design two explicit wanting
measures were obtained, one based on just looking at and smelling the
food, with the other made after consuming it. While both wanting
ratings evidenced greater change than the liking measure, the one made
after consumption demonstrated the largest change across lunch. Par-
ticipants salivation rate to the palatable snack foods was also assessed.
Salivation rate increased after lunch, when participants again viewed
and sniffed these foods. Changes in salivation rate across lunch were
linked to changes in liking, independent of explicit wanting. Partici-
pants who reported smaller changes in liking across lunch were most
likely to salivate more to the snack foods after than before lunch.
Conversely, changes in explicit wanting were linked to changes in
hunger (but not fullness) across the meal, with this effect being in-
dependent of changes in liking. These various findings suggest that
explicit reports of wanting and liking can be differentiated by a change
in physiological state, and that related differences also emerge in their
relationships with changes in salivation rate (liking) and hunger
(wanting).
While it is evident that self-reports of wanting and liking behave
differently following a change in physiological state, it is quite another
thing to infer from this that these represent dissociations relevant to
IST. Our principal argument that they do is that the final common
pathway that informs explicit wanting ratings draws upon multiple
sources of information, including implicit ‘wanting’ processes that are
described in IST. Indeed, if implicit ‘wanting’ is an important driver of
human behavior it must ultimately manifest in explicit mental states
(e.g., craving) and/or self-observable behavior (e.g., food seeking). That
this view is to some extent shared by other researchers can be seen in
the widespread use of explicit wanting measures in the human IST lit-
erature [26] and also by the use of explicit wanting as a form of cri-
terion validity for implicit ‘wanting’, especially in the drug craving
literature (e.g., [17–19]). Moreover, there are now several published
papers, outside of the domain of food (and see [10], for an interesting
food-related case), that indicate dissociations for explicit wanting and
liking that directly mirror implicit measures of these same variables
(e.g., [7]) and even some cases where explicit dissociations are evident
but not with implicit measures [35]. Returning to our findings, liking as
conceptualised in IST, is then differentiated from explicit wanting, be-
cause sufficient components of implicit ‘wanting’ feed into explicit
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Physiology & Behavior 182 (2017) 101–106
wanting judgments to enable a dissociation to occur from liking under
conditions of a change in physiological state.
Needless to say, this is not the only possible interpretation of our
findings. An alternate viewpoint would be that wanting (and wanting
more) ratings simply reflect another set of processes (see [26]), namely
between participants predictions as to how much they may like a food
now (expected-liking) and how much they actually like it when they eat
it (liking ratings). We suggest this perspective does not offer as com-
pelling an account of the dissociation observed here, relative to IST.
There are two reasons for this assertion. First, expected-liking draws
upon a weighted average of prior liking experiences that is distorted by
start (i.e., primacy), peak, and end (i.e., recency) evaluations [21,39].
Most work on expected liking has been conducted outside of the food
domain, but what there is suggests that something broadly similar
happens here too (e.g., [14,20,29]). As expected-liking relies upon an
averaging, rather than being based upon separate memories of liking for
that food when hungry, and liking for that food when sated, there
should then be little change between evaluations made before and after a
meal. So, if expected-liking primarily drives wanting ratings, wanting
ratings should be relatively stable across lunch. Clearly, this is not
consistent with what we observed, as wanting ratings changed more
than liking, something that would not then be expected if wanting
ratings were primarily driven by expected-liking.
There is a second reason to suspect that expected-liking does not
solely account for the behavior of wanting ratings. As noted in the
Results (and see Fig. 1), want more ratings changed to a greater extent
across lunch than wanting ratings. Recall that participants made the
want more ratings just after the liking ratings, and both of these almost
immediately after consuming an item of the snack food. If then
memory-based expected-liking were being used to drive wanting rat-
ings, then want more ratings should be very similar to liking ratings
(i.e., expected liking should fall into line with actual liking). As the data
show this was not the case, and in fact want more ratings demonstrated
a more extreme change across lunch than the wanting ratings obtained
after looking at and smelling the food. To the extent that expected-
liking is the principal alternate account of how wanting ratings are
formed, it is for these reasons that we suggest that IST may better ex-
plain the observed dissociation between explicit wanting and liking.
As just described, want more ratings changed most across lunch, and
to a greater extent than wanting ratings. One explanation for this dif-
ference could be the relative influence of expected-liking ratings, which
may be greater for wanting ratings than for want more ratings. The
main reason for suggesting this comes from findings made in the
Attuquaefio et al., (2016) study. They found that individual difference
in changes in explicit wanting relative to liking, across lunch, were
associated with a measure of episodic memory. However, this was not
the case for the difference between want more and liking ratings. The
reason why this distinction may be important, is that it has been sug-
gested that expected liking ratings are a product of episodic memory
processes (e.g., [27]). Thus, we suggest that wanting ratings are a
combination of IST ‘wanting’ and expected-liking, while the want more
ratings may be a purer measure of IST ‘wanting’ that is less con-
taminated by expected-liking and thus less related to a measure of
episodic memory. On this basis then, and to the extent that implicit
‘wanting’ measures better tap ‘wanting’ in the IST sense, we would
predict that explicit want more ratings made after tasting a food would
be more strongly linked to implicit ‘wanting’ measures, than wanting
ratings made after viewing and smelling a food.
In addition to explicit wanting and liking, we also measured sali-
vation rate to the palatable snack foods, both before and after lunch.
Salivation rate was, on average, significantly higher after lunch than
before. Several variables are known to affect salivation rate [8] and two
of these may relevant here. First, having recently consumed food prior
to a salivation measure is known to increase unstimulated saliva flow,
and this could account for the observed change across lunch [9].
Second, consuming water at lunch, which may have increased
R.J. Stevenson et al.
participants degree of hydration relative to before lunch, can also act to
increase salivation rates [31]. In addition to the general trend for in-
creased salivation rate across lunch, it is also apparent that there was
variability in the degree to which this occurred (see Fig. 2). We ob-
served that this variability was differentially correlated with changes in
liking but not changes in wanting. Smaller reductions in liking across
lunch were associated with larger increases in salivation rate across
lunch. Yet again, this would suggest that explicit wanting and liking are
not measuring identical constructs, and that sufficient difference exists
between them to obtain dissociations even with a relatively modest
sample size used here.
A measure that we would expect to be conceptually closer to
‘wanting’, relative to liking, is hunger. A significant complication here
is that hunger has multiple meanings [32], covering stomach-related
physical sensations, an awareness of having eaten, and most relevant of
all ‘hedonic hunger’ the desire to consume palatable foods [22]. Con-
sistent with this, we observed stronger links between changes in
wanting and wanting more ratings and changes in hunger, than for
liking ratings (and interestingly in light of the discussion above re-
garding the difference between wanting and wanting more ratings, a
somewhat stronger link for the latter). As hunger ratings are likely to
reflect a composite of inputs, including ‘hedonic hunger’ - a construct
that shares resemblance to the IST construct of wanting - we would
suggest that it is this overlap that accounts for the greater link to
wanting/wanting more ratings than to liking.
In conclusion, we observed a dissociation between changes in ex-
plicit wanting, liking and wanting more, for palatable snack foods,
evaluated before and after a filling lunch. We suggest that this dis-
sociation reflects the input of implicit ‘wanting’ processes, as envisaged
by IST, into the explicit wanting ratings, allowing a dissociation with
liking to emerge under conditions of a change in physiological state. IST
‘wanting’ inputs may be purer for ratings of wanting more obtained
after sampling a food than for wanting ratings made after viewing and
smelling alone. We also observed differential patterns of association,
with changes in liking linked to changes in salivation across lunch, and
changes in hunger linked to changes in wanting/wanting more ratings
across lunch. Finally, the simplicity with which explicit wanting ratings
can be obtained, their easy use with individual stimuli (foods or pic-
tures), suggests that understanding how explicit wanting relates to
implicit ‘wanting’ as described in IST, is a question worth pursuing.
Acknowledgements
We thank the ARC for their support (DP150100105) and Andrea
Zuniga, Sophia Pender, Christine Leonards for assistance with this ex-
periment.
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