title: Emotional Eating Is Not What You Think It Is and Emotional Eating Scales Do Not Measure What You Think They Measure.
abstract: In eating research, it is common practice to group people into different eater types, such as emotional, external and restrained eaters. This categorization is generally based on scores on self-report questionnaires. However, recent studies have started to raise questions about the validity of such questionnaires. In the realm of emotional eating, a considerable number of studies, both in the lab and in naturalistic settings, fail to demonstrate increased food intake in emotional situations in self-described emotional eaters. The current paper provides a review of experimental and naturalistic studies investigating the relationships between self-reported emotional eater status, mood, and food consumption. It is concluded that emotional eating scales lack predictive and discriminative validity; they cannot be assumed to measure accurately what they intend to measure, namely increased food intake in response to negative emotions. The review is followed by a discussion of alternative interpretations of emotional eating scores that have been suggested in the past few years, i.e., concerned eating, uncontrolled eating, a tendency to attribute overeating to negative affect, and cue-reactive eating.
authors.affiliation: Eating Disorders and Obesity, Clinical Psychological Science, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University Maastricht, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Peggy
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bongers
authors.affiliation: Eating Disorders and Obesity, Clinical Psychological Science, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University Maastricht, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Anita
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Jansen
keywords: concerned eating; cue-reactive eating; emotional eating; self-report questionnaires; uncontrolled eating; validity