Facing the undesirable health consequences of being obese, an important question is why some people are not able to resist eating to excess. It is theorized that increased impulsivity at least partly underlies the inability to control eating behaviour; being more impulsive is supposed to make it more difficult to resist food intake. Thirty-three obese children in a residential setting and 31 lean control children are tested. Impulsivity is measured with two behavioural measures (inhibitory control and sensitivity to reward) and questionnaires. Results show that the obese children in treatment were more sensitive to reward and showed less inhibitory control than normal weight children. In addition, the obese children with eating binges were more impulsive than the obese children without eating binges. Most interesting finding was that the children that were the least effective in inhibiting responses, lost less weight in the residential treatment program. To conclude: impulsivity is a personality characteristic that potentially has crucial consequences for the development and maintenance, as well as treatment of obesity.

According to dual-process models, excessive alcohol use emerges when response inhibition ability is insufficient to inhibit automatic impulses to drink alcohol. This study examined whether strengthening response inhibition for alcohol-related cues decreases alcohol intake. Fifty-two heavy drinking students were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: In the beer/no-go condition, participants performed a go/no-go task that consistently paired alcohol-related stimuli with a stopping response, to increase response inhibition for alcohol-related stimuli. In the beer/go condition, in contrast, participants were always required to respond to alcohol-related stimuli during the go/no-go task. Before and after the go/no-go manipulation, we measured weekly alcohol intake and implicit attitudes toward alcohol. In addition, we measured alcohol consumption during a taste test immediately after the go/no-go manipulation. Following the manipulation, participants in the beer/no-go condition demonstrated significantly increased negative implicit attitudes toward alcohol, and a significant reduction in weekly alcohol intake, while participants in the beer/go condition showed a non-significant increase in implicit positive attitudes toward alcohol and a significant increase in weekly alcohol intake. This study demonstrates that repeatedly stopping prepotent responses toward alcohol-related stimuli can be an effective strategy to reduce excessive alcohol use.

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The results strongly confirmed our expectations: participants with strong implicit preferences for snack foods and low inhibitory capacity gained the most weight. These findings imply that ineffective response inhibition may render people vulnerable to excessive or impulsive behavior in general, but that the manifestation thereof is determined by domain-specific preferences or needs.

When inhibitory control is lacking, people are more prone to indulge in high calorie food. This research examined whether training to inhibit food-related responses renders one less susceptible to temptations of high calorie food. Trait chocolate lovers were divided into three conditions: participants either consistently inhibited responding to chocolate stimuli (chocolate/no-go condition), consistently responded to chocolate stimuli (chocolate/go condition), or responded to chocolate stimuli only during half the trials (control condition). Chocolate consumption was measured following the manipulation with a taste test. Chocolate consumption did not differ between the control condition and the chocolate/go condition, and increased as a function of dietary restraint in both conditions. In the chocolate/no-go condition, however, chocolate consumption was significantly reduced, and higher levels of dietary restraint were associated with decreased chocolate intake. These findings demonstrate that repeatedly practicing inhibitory control over food-related responses can help people regain control over the consumption of high calorie food.