A negative association between socioeconomic status (SES) and levels of overweight/obesity is consistently found in high- and middle-income countries. Yet, there is little conclusive evidence about the mechanisms driving this association. In this systematic review, we discuss and compare the results of 22 studies that examine the role of psychosocial mediators in the association between SES and BMI in diverse population samples. These include factors related to resources and constraints in one's external neighborhood, social resources, and psychological factors such as stress. The findings support theoretical models indicating that SES is related to BMI partially through environmental and psychological factors. Importantly, SES often remains a significant predictor of weight status, indicating the importance of also addressing structural antecedents in order to improve health among lower SES populations. We thoroughly discuss the quality and limitations of current study designs and mediation testing and provide recommendations for future research.

How do people cognitively represent appetitive stimuli? Do interactions with appetitive stimuli shape how we think about them, and do such representations affect motivation to consume? Although much is known about how people respond to appetitive stimuli, little is known about how they are represented. We examine this in the domain of sugar-sweetened drinks, which constitute a significant self-control problem for many people. Given people's rich and diverse learning histories of consuming them, we propose that representations of these stimuli will show high variability, and that they will reflect idiosyncratic simulations, or reenactments, of previous consumption experiences. Representing drinks in terms of consuming and enjoying them may predict the motivation to consume. In three experiments (total N = 457), participants described nonalcoholic drinks in a "feature listing task," a free production task to assess cognitive representations of concepts through natural language. We also measured consumption frequency, desire to drink, and intake (Experiment 3), and we measured (Experiments 1 and 2) or manipulated (Experiment 3) thirst. Illustrating the variability of participants' representations of drinks, participants reported a large number of different features (210-331 unique features per drink). Drinks were described heavily with words related to consumption and reward experiences, especially sugary drinks, and especially when consumed frequently. Consumption and reward features predicted desire and intake, more strongly than thirst. These findings suggest that simulations of previous rewarding interactions play a key role in representations of appetitive stimuli, and that understanding these representations may be useful across domains of appetitive behavior.

Research suggests that being oriented more towards the future (than the present) is correlated with healthier eating. However, this research tends to be correlational, and thus it is unclear whether inducing people to think about their future could increase healthy eating. Therefore, we investigated whether inducing people to think about their lives in the future versus the present would influence their intake of healthy (muesli) and unhealthy (Maltesers) food. Across two experiments, the effect of thinking about the future versus the present interacted with participants’ body mass index (BMI) to influence their consumption of unhealthy food, but no reliable effects were found for the consumption of healthy food. Among individuals with a higher BMI, thinking about their lives in the future resulted in lower consumption of the unhealthy food compared to thinking about their lives in the present. However, this effect was reversed for those with a lower BMI. In Experiment 2, we found no evidence that this effect was due to reduced impulsivity (as measured by a delay discounting task and a stop-signal task). This suggests that thinking about the future can reduce unhealthy eating among heavier people.

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Many of the key problems humans are facing today result from desires, habits, and social norms impeding behaviour change. Here, we apply a grounded cognition perspective to these phenomena, suggesting that simulating the consequences of one’s actions plays a key role in them. We first describe the grounded cognition theory of desire and motivated behaviour, and present evidence on how consumption and reward simulations underlie people’s representation of appetitive stimuli and guide motivated behaviour. Then, we discuss how the theory can be used to understand the effects of habits, social norms, and various self-regulation strategies. We suggest conceptualising behaviour change as overcoming the simulations of hedonic and social reward that favour existing habits and behaviours, and as updating situated representations of motivated behaviours in their social context. We discuss how this perspective can help us understand the challenges that people experience in initiating and repeating new behaviours, and in high-impact decision making in the face of the status quo. In order to move beyond the socially sanctioned, habitual behaviours that currently threaten human and planetary health, we must understand what motivates them, and how this motivation can be harnessed for the greater good.