ABSTRACT
Considerable research has recently been conducted testing S. Schachter's hypothesis that overweight individuals are unresponsive to "internal," physiological cues signalling hunger and satiety and highly responsive to "external," food- or environment-related cues. When food is given in small units, overweight individuals are less accurate in recalling the number of units they have eaten than are normal individuals. This suggests that overweight individuals do not regulate food intake by counting. The very large intake of overweight subjects can be understood by taking seriously the implications of the "recall" data: overweight subjects do not monitor their food intake, but instead eat rather inattentively. While the research on obesity inspired by Schachter grew directly out of research on cognitive and social determinants of the labels which individuals apply to feeling states, it does not appear likely that the errors made by the obese fit into that paradigm.
