Competing Visual and Olfactory Imagery Tasks Suppress Craving for Coffee

Kemps, Eva
Tiggemann, Marika

¹School of Psychology, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia

This research was supported under the Australian Research Council's Discovery Project funding scheme (Project No. DP0664435). We are grateful to Sarah Hollitt and Nova Reinfeld-Kirkman for assistance with data collection.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Eva Kemps, School of Psychology, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, South Australia, 5001 Australia. Electronic mail may be sent to [email protected]

Received October 21, 2008

Revision received December 10, 2008

Accepted December 15, 2008

Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology 17(1):p 43-50, February 2009. | DOI: 10.1037/a0014962

Using the elaborated intrusion theory of desire as a theoretical basis, the present experiments investigated whether mutual competition between modality-specific tasks and desire-related imagery can suppress cravings for caffeine—in particular, coffee. Data from a pilot survey (Experiment 1) in 106 female undergraduate habitual coffee drinkers showed that coffee cravings are characterized predominantly by sensory images in the visual, olfactory, and gustatory modalities. Experiments 2 and 3 tested the prediction that a competing visual or olfactory imagery task would reduce such cravings, relative to an auditory imagery task. In each experiment, 90 female undergraduate habitual coffee drinkers were asked to forego their morning cup of coffee and were subsequently exposed to pictures of coffee (Experiment 2) or actual coffee (Experiment 3). After the craving induction protocol, participants completed either a visual, auditory, or olfactory imagery task with neutral (i.e., non-coffee-related) content. As predicted, the visual and olfactory imagery tasks reduced participants' cravings for coffee, whereas the auditory task did not. Imagery techniques in the visual or olfactory domain could provide a useful adjunct to the behavioral regime of caffeine fading for consumers who are trying to quit caffeine use or reduce their intake.