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Buffering against weight gain following dieting setbacks: An implicit theory intervention

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Abstract

Research on implicit theories suggests that incremental beliefs—that attributes are malleable—can help buffer people against the adverse effects of setbacks on goal achievement. We conducted a longitudinal experiment to examine whether an incremental beliefs intervention could help dieters manage their body weight in the face of severe dieting setbacks. To explore the efficacy of our incremental beliefs intervention, we randomly assigned individuals to a control, a knowledge, or an incremental beliefs condition. In addition to examining the main effect of intervention condition on weight-loss across a 12-week period, we also tested the hypothesis that although participants assigned to the control or knowledge intervention condition would gain more weight as dieting setbacks became more severe, participants assigned to the incremental beliefs condition would not. Results supported this hypothesis: Incremental beliefs protected against setback-related weight-gain. Implications for integrating implicit beliefs interventions with obesity relapse prevention programs are discussed.

Highlights

► Dieting setbacks are inevitable. ► Believing attributes are malleable can protect against adverse effects of setbacks. ► Such incremental beliefs can help dieters manage weight after severe setbacks. ► Our incremental beliefs intervention buffered against setback-related weight-gain.

Introduction

Maintaining a healthy body weight is difficult, as illustrated by the 34% of Americans who are obese (BMI > 30) and the additional 34% who are overweight (BMI > 25) (Flegal, Carroll, Ogden, & Curtin, 2010). Millions of people diet (Hill, 2002), but most of them ultimately gain weight (Mann et al., 2007). Our “obesogenic environment” yields nearly inevitable setbacks in the pursuit of nutrition and exercise goals (e.g., Brownell and Rodin, 1994, Lowe, 2003, Stroebe, 2008), which, in turn, frequently cause weight gain (Cochran and Tesser, 1996, Polivy and Herman, 1985).

This article reports the results of a longitudinal intervention designed to buffer dieters against setback-related weight gain by altering their implicit theories of body weight (Dweck, 2000, Molden and Dweck, 2006). This intervention was designed to foster the belief that body weight is changeable (Burnette, 2010). Parallel incremental beliefs—that attributes are malleable and, consequently, that one is not destined to long-term failure following poor performance—in the academic domains buffer against the adverse effects of academic setbacks on academic performance (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007). In the present article we (a) develop a novel implicit theory of body weight intervention to help individuals reach their weight-loss goals; (b) compare this incremental beliefs intervention to a comprehensive information-based weight-loss intervention; (c) test whether changes in incremental beliefs mediate any links between the incremental beliefs intervention and changes in body weight, and (d) discuss applications of our findings for obesity relapse prevention programs.

The sole emphasis of the incremental beliefs intervention was presenting evidence that body weight is malleable. This minimalist intervention offered no information about exercise or nutrition, no training on weight-loss strategies, and no lifestyle change recommendations for reaching weight-loss goals. In line with implicit theory research (Dweck & Leggett, 1988), our major prediction was that the incremental beliefs intervention would be especially relevant in times of threats to one's ability. As such, we focused on weight change after setbacks to one's dieting goals.

When confronting dieting-related setbacks (e.g., overeating at a party), knowledge related to lifestyle, nutrition and exercise may not be very useful. Motivation to behave in accord with such knowledge wanes as dieters become frustrated with unavoidable temptations (Herman & Polivy, 2011). Indeed, dieters often exhibit the “what-the-hell” effect, disengaging entirely from their goal following setbacks in favor of unrestrained indulgence (Polivy & Herman, 1985). The what-the-hell effect emerges when dieters drink a milkshake in a taste perception task (Herman & Mack, 1975); when they observe a model overeating (Polivy, Herman, Younger, & Erskine, 1979); and even when they merely think they consumed a few extra calories, regardless of whether they have actually done so (Polivy, 1976). In the current article, we suggest that an incremental message can help buffer dieters against succumbing to the what-the-hell effect after severe dieting setbacks.

We suggest that the incremental intervention is likely to do so for two reasons. First, incremental messages inculcate a mindset that encourages dieters to remain motivated instead of disengaging from their goal after dieting setbacks. To avoid falling prey to the what-the-hell effect, dieters must believe that they have the ability to change their outcomes, which is precisely what an incremental message can achieve. For example, participants in a recent one-shot laboratory experiment who read a brief article suggesting that body weight is malleable (an incremental message) responded to hypothetical dieting setbacks with greater confidence in their opportunity for future success and less goal disengagement, relative to participants who read a brief article suggesting that body weight is fixed (an entity message; Burnette, 2010). Second, across achievement contexts, incremental messages help to foster effective self-regulatory strategies when facing setbacks (Burnette et al., 2011, Dweck, 2000).

These motivational and self-regulatory benefits of incremental beliefs can ultimately promote better goal achievement in the face of setbacks. For example, in academic interventions, encouraging students to hold an incremental theory helps to buffer against the typical decline in grade point average following the transition from elementary school to the more challenging context of middle school (Blackwell et al., 2007). In short, incremental messages can buffer against setbacks by providing a mindset that helps individuals remain motivated to achieve their goals. Such interventions do not inculcate the skills necessary to eat more healthfully (or to study more effectively), but rather we suggest that the motivational and self-regulatory consequences of holding incremental beliefs buffer people against setback-related weight gain.

Given that setbacks to one's eating and exercise goals predict weight gain (e.g., Ulen, Huizinga, Beech, & Elasy, 2008), and that incremental beliefs work to buffer people against the deleterious effects of setbacks on goal achievement, we predicted that participants facing severe setbacks would be able to avoid weight-gain over the present 12-week study if they were in the incremental beliefs condition rather than the no-intervention control condition. However, given that incremental beliefs rarely directly influence motivation and subsequent achievement (e.g., in the absence of adversity; Dweck and Leggett, 1988, Cury et al., 2008, Plaks and Stecher, 2007), we expected that participants in the incremental beliefs intervention would not differ from those in the control condition when facing mild setbacks to their eating and exercise goals.

We also included a third condition to provide a broader context for interpreting changes in body weight in the incremental beliefs and the control conditions. In this third condition, the knowledge intervention, we employed the strongest comparison condition we could generate in light of our Web-based intervention procedures, providing participants with a broad range of scientifically validated information for promoting weight-loss. We focused on the main pillars of the LEARN program for successful weight-loss (Brownell, 1997), one of the most comprehensive and efficacious approaches to weight management. We incorporated information related to lifestyle (e.g., reduce pace of eating), exercise (e.g., information on understanding mechanisms linking exercise to weight-control) and nutrition (e.g., maximize fiber). We also provided healthy recipes and strategies for reaching weight-loss goals. Given that we provided participants with information that has been shown to be useful in controlling weight, we expected that participants in this condition would lose more weight over this 12-week study than would participants in the control condition. This knowledge condition was especially relevant to the present research as a comparison for the incremental beliefs intervention for participants confronting setbacks. Specifically, we hypothesized that any potential advantage of the LEARN-inspired knowledge condition over the incremental beliefs condition should be significantly smaller (perhaps even nonexistent) as individuals confronted setbacks of greater severity.

In sum, we advanced three hypotheses. First, the intervention hypothesis was that participants in the incremental beliefs intervention would lose more weight at Time 2 than would participants in the control condition, although we suspected that participants in the knowledge condition might lose even more weight than participants in the incremental beliefs condition because the knowledge condition was a much more extensive intervention. Second, the mechanism hypothesis was that changes in incremental beliefs are the driving mechanism behind changes in weight from Time 1 to Time 2. Third, and most importantly, the incremental buffering hypothesis was that participants assigned to the knowledge or control condition would gain more weight as setbacks became more severe, whereas participants assigned to the incremental beliefs condition would not. Another way of conceptualizing this third hypothesis is that the knowledge intervention, with its proven weight-control information, would be most effective at promoting weight-loss when setbacks are mild, but that its advantages over the incremental beliefs intervention would be smaller (perhaps even nonexistent) when setbacks are severe.

Section snippets

Method

To test our three hypotheses, we recruited 169 participants (80% female) who were currently trying to lose weight, with the majority (61%) having dieted at least twice in the previous year. We focused on such a population because restrained eaters are especially susceptible both to the “what-the-hell” effect and to weight gain after dieting setbacks (e.g., Polivy & Herman, 1985). According to the weight measurement we took at Time 1 (T1), 81% had BMI scores in the overweight or obese range,

Manipulation check

Before conducting hypothesis tests, we tested whether participants in the incremental condition exhibited stronger incremental beliefs regarding body weight at T2 than participants in the other two conditions (neither of which included any information about the malleability of body weight). As expected, an independent samples t-test revealed that, at T2, participants in the incremental intervention (M = 5.17, SD = 0.70) believed more strongly in the malleability of body weight than did participants

Discussion

Modernity has brought ever-increasing access to fattening food, which renders dieting setbacks virtually inevitable in wealthy countries (Brownell and Horgan, 2004, Kessler, 2009, Stroebe, 2008, Wansink, 2006). Our longitudinal intervention demonstrated that both the incremental and the knowledge interventions buffer against the natural trend toward weight-gain. Additionally, for participants for whom the intervention successfully inculcated an increase in incremental beliefs, it even reversed

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    We thank the Anthony Marchionne Foundation for funding, Emma Berry, Ryan Erickson-Kulas, Nellie Jenkins and Eric VanEpps for their help in data collection and Paul Eastwick, Gráinne Fitzsimons, Don Forsyth, and Jeff Green for their insightful feedback.

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