Need for affect, need for cognition, and the intention-fruit consumption relationship: an action-control perspective

Objective: Predictors of action-control profiles are useful targets for health behaviour change interventions, but action-control research has not focused on fruit consumption and has not yet included need for affect and need for cognition, despite the demonstrated usefulness of these variables in a broad range of research. The role of these variables for fruit consumption action control was explored.
Design: Prospective data was collected with self-administered questionnaires.
Setting: University.
Method: Undergraduate students (n = 109; mean age = 22.63 (SD = 2.67), 78% female) who were recruited using announcements at the university completed measures of need for affect and cognition and theory of planned behaviour items that were used as independent variables. Self-reported fruit consumption one month later was the dependent variable. Data were analyzed using bivariate correlations, discriminant function analysis and analysis of variance.
Results: Affective attitude, cognitive attitude and perceived behavioural control (PBC) were significantly correlated with the discriminant function. Successful intenders had significantly higher scores on PBC than unsuccessful intenders; intenders had significantly higher scores on attitude measures and PBC. Additionally, high-affect unsuccessful intenders had higher scores on affective attitudes measures than high-affect unsuccessful nonintenders.
Conclusion: Cognitive attitude, affective attitude, and PBC are relevant intervention targets to increase motivation to consume sufficient fruits. Further, the promotion of controllability of fruit consumption should minimize the intention-fruit consumption gap. These effects occur relatively independent of need for affect and cognition.