Traci Mann
Biographic Data
| ID | 3596545 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Traci Mann |
| GIVEN NAMES | Traci |
| FAMILY NAME | Mann |
| SIGNATURE | MANN T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Minnesota |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4853-3474 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 159 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Reappropriating Fat: The impact of labeling on self and others
The term fat is widely regarded as a stigmatizing descriptor and is often associated with negative social and health-related consequences for individuals in larger bodies. However, emerging research suggests that reclaiming stigmatizing language may serve as a strategy for empowerment among marginalized groups. The present study examines both motivations for and affective consequences of using the term fat in positive and negative ways. In Study …
How multiple motives facilitate decisions to exercise in contexts with tempting alternatives: Evidence from two scenario studies
OBJECTIVE: Both affectively-charged and reflective motivation may be necessary to sustain recommended physical activity (PA) guidelines, especially in contexts with tempting alternatives. However, our understanding of how different sources of motivation facilitate PA across contexts is limited. This paper presents a novel value-based model that specifies how affectively-charged and reflective motivation interact to support PA decisions based on a…
Weight loss advice from a healthcare provider is motivating, but it is also stigmatizing: An Experimental, Scenario-Based Approach
BACKGROUND: It is standard practice for healthcare providers to give weight loss advice or counseling to higher-weight patients (ie, those with a BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2), but the immediate psychological consequences of this practice have rarely been examined. PURPOSE: We hypothesized that receiving weight loss advice from a healthcare provider might lead people to feel both motivated to engage in healthy behaviors and stigmatized for their weight. METHOD…
Norms and attributions about weight gain during the Covid-19 pandemic
Weight gain was common during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, potentially creating a new descriptive norm about weight gain. The unique context of a global pandemic may have influenced situational attributions for weight gain that were not typical prior to the pandemic. We examined the effects of the new norm on people's views about responsibility and blame for weight gain. In two preregistered surveys, we aimed to manipulate the salienc…
Consequences of receiving weight-related advice from a healthcare provider: Understanding the varied experiences of people with higher weight
Control Yourself: Broad Implications of Narrowed Attention
Attention represents a key element of self-control, and multiple theoretical accounts have highlighted the role played by abundant attentional capacity in effecting successful self-regulation. What, then, are the consequences of living in today’s world, in which attention can become so easily divided by a multitude of stimuli? In this article, we consider the implications of divided attention for self-control and show that although the end result…
Psychological Science in the Wake of Covid-19: Social, Methodological, and Metascientific Considerations
The COVID-19 pandemic has extensively changed the state of psychological science from what research questions psychologists can ask to which methodologies psychologists can use to investigate them. In this article, we offer a perspective on how to optimize new research in the pandemic’s wake. Because this pandemic is inherently a social phenomenon—an event that hinges on human-to-human contact—we focus on socially relevant subfields of psychology…
Calorie deprivation impairs the self-control of eating, but not of other behaviors
Objective Sustained weight loss is difficult to achieve, and weight regain is common due to biological and psychological changes caused by calorie deprivation. These changes are thought to undermine weight loss efforts by making self-control more difficult. However, there is a lack of evidence showing a causal relationship between calorie deprivation and behavioral self-control.Design In this longitudinal field experiment, we tested whether a ten…
The soulless cycle: Social physique anxiety as a mediator of the relation between body mass index and exercise frequency
Eating up cognitive resources: Does attentional consumption lead to food consumption
Reducing sugar use in coffee while maintaining enjoyment: A randomized controlled trial
Consuming coffee without (or with less) sugar may help people lower their daily calorie intake without restrictive dieting. We tested two theory-based interventions to help people do so. One involved gradually reducing sugar over time, and the other was based on mindfulness theory. These interventions were compared to a repeated exposure (to sugar-free coffee) group. Participants in all conditions had significant increases in consumption of sugar…
An in-home intervention of parent-implemented strategies to increase child vegetable intake: Results from a non-randomized cluster-allocated community trial
This trial has been retrospectively registered at : # NCT03641521 on August 21, 2018
Body mass index and educational inequality: An update of Crandall (1995)
Over 2 decades ago, social psychological research revealed that weight stigma may undermine educational achievement. This study documented that a greater proportion of college students were thin compared with the general population and that heavier females received less college financial support fro
Examining the feasibility of implementing behavioural economics strategies that encourage home dinner vegetable intake among low-income children
Objective To examine the feasibility of implementing nine behavioural economics-informed strategies, or ‘nudges’, that aimed to encourage home dinner vegetable intake among low-income children. Design Caregivers were assigned six of nine strategies and implemented one new strategy per week (i.e. 6 weeks) during three dinner meals. Caregivers recorded child dinner vegetable intake on the nights of strategy implementation and rated the level of dif…
Behavioral compensation before and after eating at the Minnesota State Fair
Serving vegetables first: A strategy to increase vegetable consumption in elementary school cafeterias
Prediction of Daily Food Intake as a Function of Measurement Modality and Restriction Status
OBJECTIVE: Research on eating relies on various indices (e.g., stable, momentary, neural) to accurately reflect food-related reactivity (e.g., disinhibition) and regulation (e.g., restraint) outside the laboratory. The degree to which they differentially predict real-world consumption remains unclear. Further, the predictive validity of these indices might vary depending on whether an individual is actively restricting intake. METHODS: We assesse…
Increasing portion sizes of fruits and vegetables in an elementary school lunch program can increase fruit and vegetable consumption
Self-regulation of health behavior: Social psychological approaches to goal setting and goal striving.
OBJECTIVE: The goal of this article is to review and highlight the relevance of social psychological research on self-regulation for health-related theory and practice. METHODS: We first review research on goal setting, or determining which goals to pursue and the criteria to determine whether one has succeeded. We discuss when and why people adopt goals, what properties of goals increase the likelihood of their attainment, and why people abandon…
If Shaming Reduced Obesity, There Would Be No Fat People
One of six commentaries on “Obesity: Chasing an Elusive Epidemic,” by Daniel Callahan, from the January‐February 2013 issue
Friends don’t let friends eat cookies: Effects of restrictive eating norms on consumption among friends
Low Calorie Dieting Increases Cortisol
OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that dieting, or the restriction of caloric intake, is ineffective because it increases chronic psychological stress and cortisol production--two factors that are known to cause weight gain; and to examine the respective roles of the two main behaviors that comprise dieting--monitoring one's caloric intake and restricting one's caloric intake--on psychological and biological stress indicators. METHODS: In a 2 (mo…
Explicit Control of Implicit Responses: Simple Directives Can Alter IAT Performance
Research has begun to reveal the malleability of implicit prejudice. One measure of this construct, the race Implicit Association Test (IAT), represents a widely-used tool to assess individuals’ positive and negative associations with different racial groups. In two studies, we demonstrate the capacity of salient pressures to alter implicit racial responses. In Study 1, an enhancement of promoting pressures through an explicit instruction to ster…
Triggers of eating in everyday life
Stepping up the pressure: Arousal can be associated with a reduction in male aggression
The attentional myopia model of behavioral control [Mann and Ward, 2007] was tested in an experiment investigating the relationship between physiological arousal and aggression. Drawing on previous work linking arousal and narrowed attentional focus, the model predicts that arousal will lead to behavior that is relatively disinhibited in situations in which promoting pressures to aggress are highly salient. In situations in which inhibitory press…
Don't mind if I do: Disinhibited eating under cognitive load
Past research has shown that strong emotional or motivational states can cause normally restrained eaters to overeat. In this article it is argued that simple cognitive load can also disinhibit eating by restrained eaters. Two studies examined this disinhibition effect. In Study 1, restrained and unrestrained eaters were given the opportunity to consume high-calorie food while performing either a high cognitive-load or low cognitive-load task. Re…
The effects of message quality and congruency on perceptions of tailored health communications
Triggers of eating in everyday life
Thin-Ideal Media and Women’s Body Dissatisfaction: Prevention using Downward Social Comparisons on Non-Appearance Dimensions
Increasing portion sizes of fruits and vegetables in an elementary school lunch program can increase fruit and vegetable consumption
Friends don’t let friends eat cookies: Effects of restrictive eating norms on consumption among friends
From 'I Wish' to 'I Will: Social-Cognitive Predictors of Behavioral Intentions
We tested the ability of several social-cognitive models to predict intentions to engage in two different health behaviors (resisting dieting and performing breast self-exam). All constructs from the health belief model (with and without self-efficacy), the theory of planned behavior (with and without perceived behavioral control) and the motivational process of the health action process approach were measured simultaneously in two subject sample…
Behavioral compensation before and after eating at the Minnesota State Fair
Serving vegetables first: A strategy to increase vegetable consumption in elementary school cafeterias
Consequences of receiving weight-related advice from a healthcare provider: Understanding the varied experiences of people with higher weight
Explicit Control of Implicit Responses: Simple Directives Can Alter IAT Performance
Research has begun to reveal the malleability of implicit prejudice. One measure of this construct, the race Implicit Association Test (IAT), represents a widely-used tool to assess individuals’ positive and negative associations with different racial groups. In two studies, we demonstrate the capacity of salient pressures to alter implicit racial responses. In Study 1, an enhancement of promoting pressures through an explicit instruction to ster…
Stepping up the pressure: Arousal can be associated with a reduction in male aggression
The attentional myopia model of behavioral control [Mann and Ward, 2007] was tested in an experiment investigating the relationship between physiological arousal and aggression. Drawing on previous work linking arousal and narrowed attentional focus, the model predicts that arousal will lead to behavior that is relatively disinhibited in situations in which promoting pressures to aggress are highly salient. In situations in which inhibitory press…
Discovery of Meaning and Adherence to Medications in HIV-infected Women
Discovery of meaning in response to illness has been linked to positive health outcomes. The mechanisms through which this occurs are unknown. This study tests a previously unexamined mechanism, engagement in healthier behaviors, which has been left uncontrolled in most studies. Forty-one HIV-infected women completed a one-month writing intervention. This writing was coded for signs of discovery of meaning. Adherence to medications was measured b…
Weight loss advice from a healthcare provider is motivating, but it is also stigmatizing: An Experimental, Scenario-Based Approach
BACKGROUND: It is standard practice for healthcare providers to give weight loss advice or counseling to higher-weight patients (ie, those with a BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2), but the immediate psychological consequences of this practice have rarely been examined. PURPOSE: We hypothesized that receiving weight loss advice from a healthcare provider might lead people to feel both motivated to engage in healthy behaviors and stigmatized for their weight. METHOD…
Eating up cognitive resources: Does attentional consumption lead to food consumption
Reducing sugar use in coffee while maintaining enjoyment: A randomized controlled trial
Consuming coffee without (or with less) sugar may help people lower their daily calorie intake without restrictive dieting. We tested two theory-based interventions to help people do so. One involved gradually reducing sugar over time, and the other was based on mindfulness theory. These interventions were compared to a repeated exposure (to sugar-free coffee) group. Participants in all conditions had significant increases in consumption of sugar…
Barriers to antiretroviral medication adherence in HIV-infected women
Little is known about the barriers which women living with HIV/AIDS encounter that impede their adherence to antiretroviral medication regimens. Yet in order to design effective interventions to improve women's adherence, it is first imperative to identify the factors that contribute to their non-adherence. The purpose of this study was to explore, from HIV-infected women's own perspectives, the barriers they faced in adhering to combination anti…
The implementation of the DHHS Guidelines for the use of antiretroviral agents in HIV-infected adults: A pilot study
The objective of this study was to assess whether United States DHHS guidelines for treatment with antiretroviral therapies are being implemented by health care providers when discussing treatment options with newly diagnosed HIV patients. Health care providers were observed interacting with HIV patients while making decisions about treatment. Observers assessed whether providers and patients discussed the five benefits and six risks of initiatin…
Don't mind if I do: Disinhibited eating under cognitive load
Past research has shown that strong emotional or motivational states can cause normally restrained eaters to overeat. In this article it is argued that simple cognitive load can also disinhibit eating by restrained eaters. Two studies examined this disinhibition effect. In Study 1, restrained and unrestrained eaters were given the opportunity to consume high-calorie food while performing either a high cognitive-load or low cognitive-load task. Re…
Evaluation of a brief low-cost intervention to improve antiretroviral treatment decisions
An earlier pilot study found that US DHHS guidelines for antiretroviral treatment were not being successfully implemented (Mann et al., 2000). A brief and inexpensive intervention (visual aid checklist) was developed with the assistance of HIV-expert physicians in order to aid HIV/AIDS health care providers' and their patients' decisions about antiretroviral therapy. The visual aid checklist consisted of a two-page coloured diagram and explanatio…
Adherence to Antiretroviral Medications in Hiv/Aids Care: A Narrative Exploration of One Woman’s Foray Into Intentional Nonadherence
Intentional nonadherence occurs when patients deliberately do not take their medications. This phenomenon has not been studied within HIV/AIDS care, a significant omission due to the difficulty of adherence to antiretroviral medications for HIV/AIDS patients and the severe risks associated with nonadherence. The purpose of this study was to explore, using HIV-positive women's own recollections collected in diary format, how and why women living w…
Adherence to Antiretroviral Medications in Hiv/Aids Care: A Narrative Exploration of One Woman’s Foray Into Intentional Nonadherence
From 'I Wish' to 'I Will: Social-Cognitive Predictors of Behavioral Intentions
We tested the ability of several social-cognitive models to predict intentions to engage in two different health behaviors (resisting dieting and performing breast self-exam). All constructs from the health belief model (with and without self-efficacy), the theory of planned behavior (with and without perceived behavioral control) and the motivational process of the health action process approach were measured simultaneously in two subject sample…
Affirmation of Personal Values Buffers Neuroendocrine and Psychological Stress Responses
Stress is implicated in the development and progression of a broad array of mental and physical health disorders. Theory and research on the self suggest that self-affirming activities may buffer these adverse effects. This study experimentally investigated whether affirmations of personal values attenuate physiological and psychological stress responses. Eighty-five participants completed either a value-affirmation task or a control task prior t…
The effects of message quality and congruency on perceptions of tailored health communications
Medicare's search for effective obesity treatments: Diets are not the answer.
Handbook of Diversity Issues in Health Psychology
Thin-Ideal Media and Women’s Body Dissatisfaction: Prevention using Downward Social Comparisons on Non-Appearance Dimensions
Discovery of Meaning and Adherence to Medications in HIV-infected Women
Discovery of meaning in response to illness has been linked to positive health outcomes. The mechanisms through which this occurs are unknown. This study tests a previously unexamined mechanism, engagement in healthier behaviors, which has been left uncontrolled in most studies. Forty-one HIV-infected women completed a one-month writing intervention. This writing was coded for signs of discovery of meaning. Adherence to medications was measured b…
Stepping up the pressure: Arousal can be associated with a reduction in male aggression
The attentional myopia model of behavioral control [Mann and Ward, 2007] was tested in an experiment investigating the relationship between physiological arousal and aggression. Drawing on previous work linking arousal and narrowed attentional focus, the model predicts that arousal will lead to behavior that is relatively disinhibited in situations in which promoting pressures to aggress are highly salient. In situations in which inhibitory press…
Triggers of eating in everyday life
Low Calorie Dieting Increases Cortisol
OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that dieting, or the restriction of caloric intake, is ineffective because it increases chronic psychological stress and cortisol production--two factors that are known to cause weight gain; and to examine the respective roles of the two main behaviors that comprise dieting--monitoring one's caloric intake and restricting one's caloric intake--on psychological and biological stress indicators. METHODS: In a 2 (mo…
Explicit Control of Implicit Responses: Simple Directives Can Alter IAT Performance
Research has begun to reveal the malleability of implicit prejudice. One measure of this construct, the race Implicit Association Test (IAT), represents a widely-used tool to assess individuals’ positive and negative associations with different racial groups. In two studies, we demonstrate the capacity of salient pressures to alter implicit racial responses. In Study 1, an enhancement of promoting pressures through an explicit instruction to ster…
Friends don’t let friends eat cookies: Effects of restrictive eating norms on consumption among friends
Self-regulation of health behavior: Social psychological approaches to goal setting and goal striving.
OBJECTIVE: The goal of this article is to review and highlight the relevance of social psychological research on self-regulation for health-related theory and practice. METHODS: We first review research on goal setting, or determining which goals to pursue and the criteria to determine whether one has succeeded. We discuss when and why people adopt goals, what properties of goals increase the likelihood of their attainment, and why people abandon…
If Shaming Reduced Obesity, There Would Be No Fat People
One of six commentaries on “Obesity: Chasing an Elusive Epidemic,” by Daniel Callahan, from the January‐February 2013 issue
Prediction of Daily Food Intake as a Function of Measurement Modality and Restriction Status
OBJECTIVE: Research on eating relies on various indices (e.g., stable, momentary, neural) to accurately reflect food-related reactivity (e.g., disinhibition) and regulation (e.g., restraint) outside the laboratory. The degree to which they differentially predict real-world consumption remains unclear. Further, the predictive validity of these indices might vary depending on whether an individual is actively restricting intake. METHODS: We assesse…
Increasing portion sizes of fruits and vegetables in an elementary school lunch program can increase fruit and vegetable consumption
Serving vegetables first: A strategy to increase vegetable consumption in elementary school cafeterias
Examining the feasibility of implementing behavioural economics strategies that encourage home dinner vegetable intake among low-income children
Objective To examine the feasibility of implementing nine behavioural economics-informed strategies, or ‘nudges’, that aimed to encourage home dinner vegetable intake among low-income children. Design Caregivers were assigned six of nine strategies and implemented one new strategy per week (i.e. 6 weeks) during three dinner meals. Caregivers recorded child dinner vegetable intake on the nights of strategy implementation and rated the level of dif…
Behavioral compensation before and after eating at the Minnesota State Fair
Medicine (27 works) · Psychology (26 works) · Eating Disorders and Behaviors (16 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (12 works) · Developmental psychology (12 works) · Psychiatry (12 works) · Social Psychology (12 works) · Obesity, Physical Activity, Diet (10 works) · Obesity (8 works) · Family medicine (7 works)