The list heuristic for studying personality correlates of food choice behaviour: a review and results from two samples.

Over the past half century, a methodology has been used to investigate predictors of eating behaviour which involves the use of a list of foods, with subjects answering some preference question(s) about each food. For each person, the number of foods which elicit a particular response, usually of rejection, is used as a psychometric measure of their eating behaviour. We refer to this as the list heuristic. There has been great variability in the exact design used and comparing across studies is difficult. We tackle this issue by comparing "sublists" within one study. Previous list heuristic studies have found a link between behaviour and both anxiety and sensation seeking. Food choice behaviours can also be studied through psychometric questionnaires of more traditional design. Such studies have produced similar results and suggest a distinction between neophobia and general "pickiness". The list heuristic is used here in two studies. Our results are notably different, finding no relationships with anxiety and only weak relationships with sensation seeking. Further, results concerning food neophobia measures (list heuristic and questionnaire) suggest problems in differentiating food neophobia from more general food rejection behavior.