Economia Comportamental aplicada em indivíduos em processo de perda de massa corpórea: uma análise acerca do efeito do atraso e de consequências hipotética

Abstract

With obesity as a worldwide concern, the present work was premised on investigating the pattern of choices in a delay discounting paradigm involving different classes of stimuli: money with delay, loss of body mass with delay and food choice involving gain and hypothetical calorie loss, as well as analyzing impulsivity and the effect of delay according to choices involving hypothetical losses and gains, correlating the discount measures of each participant with their respective BMI values. All participants had the objective of losing body mass and had access to forms in the form of questionnaires composed of competing schemes presenting two hypothetical context options with delayed and immediate values: delayed money, loss of body mass and food choice involving gain and calorie loss. The results demonstrated that the majority of participants had more self-controlled choices than impulsive choices, since they were all in the process of losing body mass through physical exercise and/or diets. Furthermore, positive correlations were observed between AUC values and BMI values, as well as positive and negative correlations between different stimulus classes. Therefore, the importance of investigating different variables when studying the discount for loss of body mass is observed.