How does desire for food and drink arise in the human mind? We suggest that rewarding simulations, which are based on previous experiences, play a key role. In other words, people think about food and drink in terms of what it feels like to consume them, and this leads to desire. We illustrate this with research using behavioral, physiological, and neuroimaging methods. This work shows that food and drink cues (e.g., words, eating contexts, labels) trigger spontaneous eating and drinking simulations (e.g., thoughts about taste, texture, and enjoyment) and that these simulations affect desire and eating experiences (e.g., cravings, salivation, taste ratings). These simulations can be disrupted or diffused through working memory load or through mindfulness, thus reducing desire. We discuss these findings in the context of simulations in motivated behavior more generally and suggest directions for future research.

People have a strong tendency to attend to reward cues, even if these cues are irrelevant to their current goal or their current task. When reward cues are goal-irrelevant, their presence may impair cognitive performance. In this meta-analysis, we quantitatively examined the rapidly growing literature on the impact of reward-related distractors on cognitive performance. We included 91 studies (N = 2,362) that used different cognitive paradigms (e.g., visual search, conflict processing) and reward-related stimuli (e.g., money, attractive food). Overall, results showed that reward-related distractors impaired cognitive performance across different tasks and stimuli, with a small effect size (Standardized Mean Change = .347). Between-study heterogeneity was large, suggesting that researchers can plausibly expect to sometimes find reversed effects (i.e., reward-related distractors boosting performance). We further showed that the average reward-driven distraction effect was robust across different reward-learning mechanisms, contexts, and methodological choices, and that this effect existed regardless of explicit task instructions to ignore distractors. In sum, the findings of this meta-analysis support the notion that cognitive processes can be thwarted by reward cues. We discuss these findings against the background of distraction-related phenomena as they are studied in clinical, educational, and work psychology.

How does desire for food and drink arise in the human mind? We suggest that rewarding simulations, based on previous experiences, play a key role. In other words, people think about food and drink in terms of what it feels like to consume them, and this leads to desire. We illustrate this with research using behavioural, physiological, and neuro-imaging methods. This work shows that food and drink cues (e.g., words, eating contexts, labels) trigger spontaneous eating and drinking simulations (e.g., thoughts about taste, texture, and enjoyment), and that these simulations affect desire and eating experiences (e.g., cravings, salivation, taste ratings). These simulations can be disrupted or diffused through working memory load or through mindfulness, thus reducing desire. We discuss these findings in the context of simulations in motivated behaviour more generally, and suggest directions for future research.

Smartphones have been shown to distract people from their main tasks (e.g., studying, working), but the psychological mechanisms underlying these distractions are not clear yet. In a preregistered experiment (https://osf.io/g8kbu/), we tested whether the distracting nature of smartphones stems from their high associated (social) reward value. Participants (N = 117) performed a visual search task while they were distracted by (a) high social reward apps (e.g., Facebook app icon + notification sign), (b) low social reward apps (e.g., Facebook app icon), and (c) no social reward apps (e.g., Weather app icon). We expected that high social reward app icons would slow down search, especially when people were deprived of their smartphones. Surprisingly, high social reward (vs. low or no social reward) apps did not impair visual search performance, yet in a survey (N = 158) participants indicated to perceive these icons as more rewarding.Our results demonstrate that even if people perceive social smartphone apps as more rewarding than nonsocial apps, this may not manifest in behavior.