Psychological Aspects of Hunger

Eating is positively reinforced by the good taste of food and negatively reinforced by hunger reduction. We develop an expectation of eating being pleasurable, making it an important motivation to seek out and consume food. Even the mere thought of food can trigger a feeling of hunger.

Attitudes, habits, and psychological needs also regulate food intake. Have you felt stuffed during a meal yet finished it and gone on to have dessert as well? Beliefs such as not to leave food remaining on your plate, as well as condition habits of autopilot snacking while watching TV, may lead us to eat even when we are not hungry. Conversely, countless dieters tend to restrict their food intake even when hungry.

Social Pressure

Especially for women, such restrictions stem from social pressure to conform to cultural standards of beauty from Playboy centrefolds and beauty pageant contestants and fashion models. It is an indicator of a clear trend towards a thinner and increasingly unrealistic ideal female body shape starting from the 1950s. Given the deluge of "thin = attractive" mass media messages in many parts of the world, it's not surprising that a survey in Australia has revealed that, even though most young women there are of average, healthy weight, only a fifth are happy with it.

Among 12 to 19-year-old Chinese female students, 80 percent are concerned about their weight. Compared with male American high school students, female students are less likely to be overweight, but more likely to diet and think of themselves as overweight. In comparison to men, women became increasingly dissatisfied with their body image throughout the last half of the 20th century.

A study by April Fallon and Paul Rozzin suggests an additional reason for this. Female college students overestimated the needed body average to conform to male preferences, while men overestimated their necessary bulkiness to conform to women's preferences. Women also had the tendency to perceive their body shape as heavier than ideal.

A study in 2004, on American and Spanish men and women, replicated this study with men's overall perception serving to keep them satisfied with their figures, while women's perceptions placed pressure on them to lose weight. Whether it be Caucasian American, African American, or Hispanic American, the men seemed more likely to have ego-protective perceptions about their body shape than women do.

However, men, too, are influenced by cultural ideals. College men's satisfaction with their bodies tend to decrease when exposed to series of advertisements of muscular males, but not when advertisements of average-built men came on. College athletes with value for muscle function tend to believe that women's preference is for a more muscular body type than theirs, making them have a preference of being more muscular than they are. The general consensus is that women's typical need is to be thin, with men who are overweight wanting to be thin and thin men wanting to be more buff.

Environmental and Cultural Factors

Food availability is the most obvious environmental regulator of eating. For millions who live poverty-stricken or famine-ravaged regions, the scarcity of food limits consumption. In contrast, the abundance of high-fat foods in many countries is a contributing factor to a high rate of obesity.

The taste and varieties of food also regulate eating. Foods that taste good increase consumption, but during a meal and from meal-to-meal; we can grow tired of eating the same thing, causing termination of the meal more quickly. In contrast, food variety increases consumption as observed at buffets.

This is because, through classical conditioning, we learn to associate the smell and sight of food with taste; in return, these food cues cause hunger. You may not be hungry and feel no need to indulge yourself unnecessarily, but the sensuous aroma will change your mind, making you feel hungry when you are not, like when you get the smell of baked goods. Even rats who are already full and ignore available foods will eat again with classically conditioned lights and sound settings they are used to associate food with.

Many other environmental stimuli can affect food intake. For example, we tend to eat more when dining with others than when dining alone. Cultural norms influence when, how, and what we eat as well. In Mediterranean countries such as Greece and Spain, they often begin their dinner late evening (around 9 p.m.). By this time, most North Americans have finished their dinner. Also, although we love variety, we tend to be more comfortable with familiar foods, often feeling difficulty overcoming squeamish thoughts of unfamiliar dishes.

Obesity

The heaviest known male and female according to history records were both Americans, weighing 1,400 pounds and 1,200 pounds, respectively, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, in 2000. A few people had approached that weight, but according to the body mass index (BMI), which takes into account the height and weight of an individual; a staggering 25 to 30 percent of American adults are obese, with 30 to 35 percent being overweight. From Canada to the Palestinian west bank, the adult obesity rates recorded are 20 to 50 percent according to many studies.

Being Obese places a great risk on one's health, as well as targets of prejudice and stereotypes. Obesity is often blamed on lack of will-power, a dysfunctional coping mechanism, heightened sensitivity to external food cues, and emotional disturbances. However, researchers have no such consistent findings between obese and non-obese people. There are hormone-related conditions that can cause weight-gain without excess food consumption, too, and hypothyroidism is one of them. South-East Asians tend to stay slim even with high-fat food consumption due to their genes, which means genes may be in play in as well, in cases of obesity.

Consequences of Diagnostic Labels

Diagnostic labels can cause important personal, social, and legal consequences for people on the receiving end of them, going beyond their clinical and scientific utility.

Social/Personal Consequences

Once a diagnostic label is attached to a person, It becomes all too easy to accept that label to be an accurate description of that individual rather than his or her behaviour. It makes it difficult to look objectively at the said person's behaviour without preconceptions of how such an individual would act. There is a likelihood of it affecting the way we would interact with such a person. For example, how would you react to the news that your new next-door neighbour had been diagnosed as a paedophile? It would be surprising if this label has no influence on your perception and interaction with that individual, whether or not the label was accurate.

According to one famous study in 1973, eight normal individuals, including psychologist David Rosenhan, got themselves admitted to psychiatric hospitals of five different states by informing mental health workers of hearing strange voices. Not surprisingly, they are diagnosed with schizophrenia upon admission. However, after admission, they acted completely normal for the duration of their stay. Upon discharge, after intervals ranging from 7 to 52 days, they typically received the diagnosis of 'schizophernia, in remission'. This label means that even with the absence of deviant behaviour, the disorder was still presumed to be present, though not currently active. Once a label is attached (understandably, in this case, given the reports of hearing strange voices), diagnosis labels are not easily shed, even with the disordered behaviour no longer present.

Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz has long been an outspoken critic of psychiatric diagnosis. He argues that the concept of mental health is itself a myth; a poor analogy to physical illness. In contrast to physical illness diagnoses, there are no physical criteria for mental illness. According to Szasz, the deviance called mental illness by psychiatry are better viewed as "problems in living" rather than "inner disorders". According to his suggestion, society invented the concept of mental illness in order to make it easier to control or change people whose behaviour upsets or threatens the existing social order. Although many mental health experts disagree with Szasz's extreme argument, they readily acknowledge the arbitrary elements in judgments of deviance.

Diagnostic labels can also play a role in the creation and worsening of psychological disorders. When individuals are aware of a psychiatric label being applied to them, they may accept the new identity implied by the label and develop the expected role and outlook. Due to the psychiatric labels often carrying degrading and stigmatised implications, the effects on morale and self-esteem can have devastating effects. Moreover, a person may despair of ever-changing and therefore, give up trying to deal with life's circumstances that may be responsible for their problems. In this way, the expectations that accompany a label may result in a self-fulfilling prophecy in which expectations become reality. Many individuals with psychological problems do not seek treatment due to the stigma attached to mental illness.

Legal Consequences

Psychiatric diagnoses also have legal consequences. Individuals judged to be dangerous to themselves or others may be involuntarily committed to mental institutions under certain circumstances. When so committed, they lose some of their civil rights and could be detained indefinitely if there is no improvement in their behaviour.

The law tries to take into account the mental statuses of individuals who are accused of crimes. Two peculiar legal concepts are competency and insanity. Competency refers to a defendant's state of mind at the time of a judicial hearing (not at the time of which the crime was committed). A defendant judged to be too disturbed to understand the nature of the legal proceedings may be labelled as "not competent to stand trial" and will be institutionalised until judged competent.

Insanity relates to the presumed state of mind of the defendant at the time which the crime was committed. Defendants may be cleared "not guilty by reason of insanity" if he/she is judged to have been severely impaired during the commotion of a crime, in which they lacked the capacity to either identify the wrongfulness of their acts or the control of their conduct. It is important to understand that insanity is a legal term, not a psychological one.

Despite the fact of the Insanity Plea being entered in only 1 in 500 cases and that in 85 percent of cases, the prosecution agrees that person is insane, the plea has long been hotly debated. For example, following the uproar due to the acquittal of John Hinckley Jr. over the attempted assassination of late US President Ronald Reagan in 1981; instead of prison, Hinckley Jr. was committed to a mental hospital.

Guilt and Insanity

Twelve years later, Jeffrey Dahmer, who was accused of grisly murders and mutations of 17 men, also entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. The defence contended that no sane person could have committed the shocking acts that Dahmer freely admitted to committing, which included cutting up his victims and eating their body parts. Diagnostic interviews, as well as psychological test results, also were indicative of psychological disturbance. Yet, the insanity plea was rejected and Dahmer was found guilty.

Both these defendants had severe mental disorders. So, why different verdicts? In Hinckley Jr.'s case, the law required the prosecution to prove that he was sane. They could not prove sanity beyond reasonable doubt, which was the reason for Hinckley's acquittal. Partly as a response to his acquittal, the law was changed, shifting the burden of proof to the defence instead of prosecution. This caused the defence to have to convince the jury that their client was insane during the committing of the crimes.

Dahmer's attorneys were unable to prove his insanity, causing his murder conviction. In order to balance the punishments for crimes with concerns of a defendant's mental status and the possible need for treatment; Canada, as well as an increasing number of  US jurisdictions; have adopted a verdict of  "guilty but mentally ill." This verdict imposes a normal sentence for a crime, but instead of jail, sends the defendant to a mental hospital for treatment. Defendants that recover before serving out their time are sent to prison for the remainder of their sentence.