title: Relations between negative affect, coping, and emotional eating.
abstract: The study was designed to examine the relations between negative affect, coping, and emotional eating. It was tested whether emotion-oriented coping and avoidance distraction, alone or in interaction with negative affect, were related to increased levels of emotional eating. Participants were 125 eating-disordered women and 132 women representing a community population. Measures included the Positive and Negative Affectivity Schedule (PANAS), the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS), and the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ). Both emotion-oriented coping and avoidance distraction were related to emotional eating, while controlling for levels of negative affect. Negative affect did not have a unique contribution to emotional eating over and above emotion-oriented coping or avoidance distraction. The findings suggest that emotional eating is related to reliance on emotion-oriented coping and avoidance distraction in eating-disordered women as well as in relatively healthy women.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, TX, USA. sonjas@ori.org
authors.forename: Sonja T P
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Spoor
authors.forename: Marrie H J
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Bekker
authors.forename: Tatjana
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Van Strien
authors.forename: Guus L
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: van Heck
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D004435:Eating / Q000523:psychology*; D001068:Feeding and Eating Disorders / Q000209:etiology / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D009426:Netherlands; D013315:Stress, Psychological; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires