By IANS,
Washington : Obese women tend to be more impulsive than their normal weight counterparts, according to a study.
University of Alabama, Birmingham (UAB) researchers tested how obese and normal-weight men, women are driven by immediate versus delayed gratification.
They gave 95 participants (men and women) the choice of receiving hypothetical amounts of money immediately or fixed amounts to be received after delays of two weeks, one month, six months or after years.
The hypothetical rewards ranged from $1,000 to $50,000. The researchers found that obese women discounted the value of future rewards by four times than normal-weight women, suggesting greater impulsivity, according to an UAB release.
One explanation is that such differences may be found in a personality trait known as eating-related disinhibition, the tendency to overeat in response to certain situations, said UAB researcher Rosalyn Weller, the study’s principle investigator.
Previous studies have shown that those who score higher in disinhibition gain weight more easily, she said. However, men score lower in disinhibition than women.
These findings appeared in the November issue of Appetite.