Obese Women Have Less Impulse Control
I’m not sure I’m buying what this latest study is selling.
Read this and see what you think.
According to a study from The University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Psychology, obese women have much less impulse control than normal-weight women. But there’s no significant difference between obese and normal-weight men.
Here’s how they came to their conclusion…
The researchers studied how obese and normal-weight men and women make their decisions. Specifically, they looked at something called delay discounting. That’s a way to measure how much a person needs immediate gratification versus whether they will wait for bigger rewards later.
The 95 men and women in this study had the hypothetical choice to receive different amounts immediately or fixed amounts of money after 2 weeks, 1 month, 6 months, 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, or 10 years.
The hypothetical amounts were from $1,000 to $50,000.
Obese women discounted the value of the future payments by 3 or 4 times more than the normal-weight women. Supposely, this shows that obese women are more impulsive.
Obese men, no matter what their IQ or income, didn’t show any differences when compared to normal-weight men and women.
The researchers tried to explain this difference in behavior by citing a personality trait called eating-related disinhibition.
That’s when you overeat in response to certain situations or food triggers.
Supposedly, men don’t score as high in disinhibition as women. Which means men can control their impulses better.
Okay, then what’s making the men fat?
The researchers didn’t address this question as far as I know. But they’re doing new delay-discounting studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging.
That means they’re using magnets to show what the brains of obese individuals do as they make decisions.
If this is the best these esteemed researchers can do, I have a feeling the obesity epidemic will be with us for quite a while longer.
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