Measuring Food Approach–Avoidance with a Mobile Swipe Task: Psychometric Evaluation

Behavioral approach–avoidance tendencies are critical for understanding spontaneous food evaluations but are challenging to measure outside laboratory settings. This article introduces the swipe Approach–Avoidance Task (swipeAAT), a novel smartphone-based task that uses swipe gestures to assess spontaneous approach–avoidance tendencies toward conventional and alternative foods. Across two preregistered online studies (N = 297), the swipeAAT was administered alongside a mobile Brief Implicit Association Test (BIAT) and several self-report measures targeting attitudes, experiences, and intentions regarding meat-, insect-, and legume-based foods. The swipeAAT showed acceptable to good internal consistency across Studies 1 and 2. The swipeAAT and the BIAT scores were uncorrelated, suggesting that the two paradigms capture distinct facets of spontaneous reactions. Similarly, correlations with self-reported measures were absent, likely reflecting differences in task modality (verbal versus visuo-motor) and the constructs assessed. These findings support the swipeAAT as a reliable, scalable mobile instrument for assessing approach–avoidance tendencies toward food, offering a practical approach for large-scale research on consumer attitudes and sustainable food choices.