BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutrition, Psychology and Brain Health
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1469301
Ego depletion and its role regarding the attitudes and behavior toward sustainable food consumption
Provisionally accepted
- University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany
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Objectives: The study's main goal was to investigate the effect of ego depletion on explicit and implicit attitudes and behavior toward sustainable food consumption in the context of dual-process models describing sustainable behavior. Methods: 171 student participants completed an explicit rating and an affective priming task, respectively, at pre -and postintervention, namely a six-minute transcription task to induce ego depletion. They then conducted a decision-making task (sustainable vs. less-sustainable chocolate bar) to test sustainable behavior during ego depletion. Results: Contrary to our hypotheses, explicit attitudes toward sustainable nutrition remained stable across conditions, showing no significant decline in the depletion group. Unexpectedly, implicit attitudes toward sustainable vegetarian nutrition became more negative over time, irrespective of the experimental condition. In the decision-making task, participants' behavior was primarily predicted by their explicit attitudes post-intervention, rather than their implicit attitudes or ego depletion state. Conclusion: These findings challenge the assumption that ego depletion weakens explicit attitudes toward sustainable behavior, particularly vegetarian nutrition. Instead, explicit attitudes appear to be stable and the predominant predictor of sustainable food choices.
Keywords: Ego Depletion, Self-Control, explicit attitudes, implicit attitudes, Vegetarian nutrition, sustainable behavior, Dual-process models
Received: 18 Sep 2024; Accepted: 09 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Daiss, Siebertz and Jansen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Fabian Daiss, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany
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