Motivating Healthy Diet Behaviors: The Self-as-Doer Identity

Abstract

We investigated whether the experimental manipulation of a self-as-doer identity predicted improved healthy food consumption immediately and one month post-intervention. Women (N = 124), 18–53 years old (M = 22.1, SD = 5.8) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions (i.e., control, education, or education and self-as-doer activity) and recorded their diets over six weeks. Repeated measures ANCOVAs were performed to determine if the self-as-doer intervention created change in healthy food consumption. Self-as-doer participants ate more healthy foods one month post-intervention than did other participants. Self-as-doer participants maintained overall healthy eating behaviors while education and control participants decreased these behaviors over the six-week period. Findings demonstrate initial evidence of an intervention effect on healthy food consumption and we discuss ways to advance research on the self-as-doer identity construct.