In their battle against the bulge, desperate dieters have tried drugs, surgery, exercise, counseling, creams and even electrical fat-burning belts.
Now psychologists found that it could persuade people to avoid fattening foods by implanting unpleasant childhood memories about the food — even though the event never happened.
The scientists say they also have successfully implanted positive opinions about asparagus by convincing subjects that they once loved the vegetable.
The findings were stronger in a second experiment where students were asked to provide details about the imaginary strawberry ice cream episode. In that case, 41 percent of the subjects given erroneous information later believed the tale and said they intended to avoid the food.
Weight-control experts expressed interest in the study, but were skeptical about using implanted memories as a dieting technique.
Deliberately implanting memories “raises profound ethical questions,” said Stephen Behnke, director of the ethics office of the American Psychological Association.
The food studies are the latest in a string of memory experiments by Loftus, a professor of psychology and criminology at UC Irvine.
Loftus is most famous for her position on recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse. Based on her work, she has suggested that most of these memories were probably false.
The point of this article is to show the real power of the mind. The mind can trick us and we can now learn to use it to trick it back into doing what serves us. You may be addicted to cigarette smoking, even though you know it’s bad for you, because the pull of peer pressure was so huge when you were younger that you started smoking. Now that desire no longer serves you but you think you are incapable of stopping.
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