Domain-specific effects of hunger on attention and choice

Sci Rep. 2026 Apr 21;16(1):13030. doi: 10.1038/s41598-026-48772-0.

ABSTRACT

Hunger leads to less healthy food choices, but its effect on decision-making in non-food domains is less clear. To close this gap, we investigated to what extent hunger state affected choice across domains by examining attentional patterns and cognitive mechanisms underlying decision-making across different domains. We implemented a within-subject design in which participants completed a food choice, an intertemporal discounting, and a social preferences task in hungry and sated states while their eye-movements were recorded. Hungry participants were more likely to look at and subsequently select tasty over healthy food items, while attention and choice remained unaffected in the non-food tasks. Cognitive modelling indicated that hunger state selectively affected attention-driven evidence accumulation processes in the food choice task. Altogether, our results are consistent with a domain-specific view, indicating that attentional and decision-making processes in non-food domains remain unaffected by states of elevated hunger.

PMID:42014776 | PMC:PMC13100030 | DOI:10.1038/s41598-026-48772-0