Assessing yourself as an emotional eater: mission impossible?
OBJECTIVE
The extent to which individuals are emotional eaters has typically been assessed by people's self-reported desire to eat when they experience negative emotions. Elevated scores on these emotional eater scales have been associated with eating pathology and obesity. However, evidence that individuals scoring high on these scales truly increase their food intake during emotional encounters is inconclusive. The current studies tested whether emotional eater scales capture the proposed tendency to eat when feeling emotional.


METHODS
In four experiments with different emotion induction procedures, female participants were randomly assigned to negative emotion or control conditions. In the control conditions positive or no emotions were induced. Next, food consumption was assessed by bogus taste tests.


METHODS
Emotional eater status, emotional experience, and actual consumption of different food types.


RESULTS
Individuals describing themselves as emotional eaters did not increase food intake during emotional encounters as compared to control conditions or individuals not judging themselves as emotional eaters.


CONCLUSIONS
The results suggest that self-reported emotional eaters do not increase food intake during emotional encounters in the laboratory. Implications of these findings are discussed, including the idea that it may be complex to adequately assess one's own emotional eating behavior.
Evers
Catharine
C
Department of Clinical & Health Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands. c.evers@uu.nl
de Ridder
Denise T D
DT
Adriaanse
Marieke A
MA
D000293:Adolescent; D015992:Body Mass Index; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D012649:Self Concept; D013315:Stress, Psychological; D055815:Young Adult