Researcher ORCID Identifier

0009-0003-8492-9721

Graduation Year

2026

Date of Submission

4-2026

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Psychology

Reader 1

Catherine Reed

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2026 Jack C Farber

Abstract

Food choice is among the most consequential everyday decisions people make, yet the cognitive processes underlying these choices remain poorly understood. This study examined multi-attribute decision-making strategies in food choice and whether individual characteristics predict strategy use. A sample of 471 participants (undergraduate students and paid Prolific U.S. adults) completed 27 binary food choice trials varying across nine nutritional and sensory attributes, an explicit attribute ranking task, and measures of health consciousness, food knowledge, and socioeconomic status. Results indicated limited introspective awareness: only 12.9% of participants matched their implicit and explicit top food attribute, near chance. The majority of participants (53.8%) could not be classified as using a systematic strategy. Food knowledge was the only individual characteristic that significantly predicted systematic strategy use. These findings suggest food choice is more cognitively complex than other decision domains, and that nutritional literacy may be foundational to structured food decision-making.

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