Hunger as a Context: Food Seeking That Is Inhibited During Hunger Can Renew in the Context of Satiety

Abstract

At the end of a diet, even a successful one, people often return to overeating. One potential reason is that the behavioral inhibition that people learn while dieting might not readily transfer outside the context in which it is learned: Basic research indicates that after a behavior is inhibited, a return to the conditioning context or simple removal from the treatment context can cause the behavior to return (i.e., to renew). Can states of hunger and satiety play the role of context? In two experiments, rats learned a food-seeking response that earned sucrose or sweet, fatty food pellets while they were satiated. Responding was then inhibited (i.e., extinguished) while the rats were hungry. On the rats’ return to the satiated state, their food seeking was renewed. Additional results suggest that associations with hunger or satiety stimuli were learned more readily than associations with other potentially useful exteroceptive stimuli. The findings have implications for understanding the role of interoceptive contexts in controlling the inhibition of motivated behavior.