title: Investigating the moderating role of emotional awareness in the association between urgency and binge eating.
abstract: Binge eating has been found to be associated with urgency (the tendency to act impulsively in response to negative affect) and emotional awareness (i.e., attention to emotions, clarity of emotions). The present study tested the hypothesis that the relation between binge eating and urgency would be moderated by emotional awareness, over and above negative affect. Participants were 249 female college students. Items from the Trait Meta Mood Scale (TMMS), the Urgency subscale of the UPPS Impulsive Behavior Scale, and the Bulimia (B) subscale of the Eating Disorders Inventory (EDI-3) were administered. As predicted, emotional awareness moderated the link between urgency and binge eating. Both Urgency×Attention to emotions and Urgency×Clarity of emotions significantly predicted binge eating scores, even after taking into account negative affect. Consistent with past research, higher levels of urgency were associated with higher levels of binge eating, even after taking negative affect into account. However, the associations were particularly strong among individuals with low levels of attention to emotions and low levels of clarity of emotions. The findings from this study have implications for future research examining binge eating.
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 603 E. Daniel St., Champaign, IL 61820, USA. Electronic address: manjrek1@illinois.edu.
authors: Eishita
authors: E
authors: Manjrekar
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 603 E. Daniel St., Champaign, IL 61820, USA.
authors: Howard
authors: H
authors: Berenbaum
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 603 E. Daniel St., Champaign, IL 61820, USA.
authors: Natasha
authors: N
authors: Bhayani
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000339:Affect; D001364:Awareness; D056912:Binge-Eating Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis*; D002032:Bulimia / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007175:Impulsive Behavior; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D014495:Universities; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Attention to emotions; Binge eating; Clarity of emotions; Emotional awareness; Urgency