The Snowball Effect of Diet Failure and the Role of Causal Attribution Style and Emotional Response

Abstract

The present study was designed to introduce a new perspective on the snowball effect of failure within the context of dieting by combining insights from the disinhibition effect studies and the abstinence violation effect studies. Two possible determinants of the snowball effect of diet failure, causal locus (a dimension of causal attribution) of a diet violation and emotional response to the violation, were tested. It was expected that internal attributions as opposed to external attributions would lead to more subsequent diet violations. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that emotional response mediates this effect. The participant group existed of 217 women from the UK, between the age of 18 and 40, who had a diet goal. Participants’ causal attribution of their most recent diet violation and emotional response to this violation were obtained. 4 days later, participants reported their subsequent diet violations of the past days. Subsequent diet violations were measured in three ways: failure days, failure frequency and subjective failure. The results did not support the hypotheses. This was possibly due to the lack of variance in the causal attribution of participants. It was noticeable that the large majority of the participants attributed their violations internally and that almost all of them violated their diet frequently within the second part of the study. This shows the importance of conducting further research into the determinant of the snowball effect diet failure.