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Eating to Ease: Emotional Eating in a Male College Population

Eating to Ease: Emotional Eating in a Male College Population. Steven Morris St. Mary’s College of Maryland April 30, 2012. Emotion Regulation. A strength-based model (Whiteside, Chen, Neighbors, Hunter, Lo, & Larimer, 2007) (Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996) Standards Monitoring

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Eating to Ease: Emotional Eating in a Male College Population

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  1. Eating to Ease: Emotional Eating in a Male College Population Steven Morris St. Mary’s College of Maryland April 30, 2012

  2. Emotion Regulation • A strength-based model (Whiteside, Chen, Neighbors, Hunter, Lo, & Larimer, 2007) • (Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996) • Standards • Monitoring • Operation

  3. Dysfunctional Emotion Regulation • Underregulation - A failure to exert self-control; an inadequate strength to counteract an unwanted thought, feeling, or impulse. • Awareness, attention, and planning (Chambers, Gullone, & Allen, 2009; Masuda, Price, & Latzman, 2011) • Overriding and resisting temptation (van den Bos & de Ridder, 2006; Whiteside et al., 2007)

  4. Dysfunctional Emotion Regulation • Misregulation - Misguided regulation that may be effortful but is not effective at controlling the emotion. • Learned pleasure association (Evers, Stok, & de Ridder, 2009; Kemp & Kopp, 2011; van den Bos & de Ridder, 2006) • Ideal effort to impose will (Chambers et al., 2009) • Focusing on short-term fix (Tomarken & Kirschenbaum, 1984)

  5. Emotional Eating • Definition: “The tendency of certain individuals to overeat in response to negative emotions” (Evers et al. 2009) • Emotional Eating Scale (EES) (Arnow, Kenardy, & Agras, 1994)

  6. Dietary Restraint • Chronic dieting with periods of binge eating. • Disinhibition hypothesis (Ruderman, 1986; Tomarken & Kirschenbaum, 1984) • Escape from self-awareness theory of binge eating (Heatherton, et al., 1998) • Restrained eaters show a higher prevalence of emotional eating (Evers, de Ridder, & Adriaanse, 2009; Whiteside et al., 2007)

  7. Cognitive Emotion Regulation • Antecedent vs. Response Strategies • Cognitive reappraisal as adaptive (Evers et al., 2009; Kemp & Kopp, 2011; Lavender & Anderson, 2009; Chambers, Gullone, & Allen, 2009) • Expressive suppression as maladaptive (Evers et al., 2009; Kemp & Kopp, 2011; Lavender & Anderson, 2009; Chambers, Gullone, & Allen, 2009)

  8. Male Depression – Coping Mechanisms • Social withdrawal • Alcohol abuse • Substance abuse • Increase in sexual promiscuity • - (Kleinke et al., 1982) • Findings of both decreased and increased snack food consumption in response to sadness (Christensen & Brooks, 2006; Macht et al., 2002)

  9. Research Questions • Do college age men emotionally eat? • IV1: Sad/Neutral Clip • Do cognitive emotion regulation strategies moderate emotional consumption? • IV2: Emotion Suppression/Cognitive Reappraisal • Do certain emotions and cognitive emotion regulation strategies cooperate to affect eating? • Interaction: Clip x Strategy

  10. Dual Experiment Design • Phase 1 – Film Clip Emotion Induction • Phase 2 – Taste Testing Paradigm

  11. Participant Demographics • 68 males • Age range: 18-43 years old (M= 20) • Ethnicity predominately White (48 White, 11 African American, 3 Hispanic, 3 Asian, 2 Other) • Laboratory space – Computer with desk space

  12. Hypotheses • Participants who experienced sadness were hypothesized to self-regulate with food and eat more than those participants who received a neutral mood induction. (Main Effect of Clip; Sad > Neutral) • Men who were instructed to cognitively reappraise would eat less than those that cognitively suppressed their emotions. (Main Effect of Strategy; Suppression > Reappraisal) • Those participants who utilized emotion suppression while viewing the sad clip would eat significantly more than those who utilized cognitive reappraisal and viewed the sad emotion clip. (Interaction: Sad x Suppression > Sad x Reappraisal)

  13. Method – Phase 1

  14. Method – Phase 2

  15. Hypothesized Results

  16. Additional Results • Mood inducing clip manipulation ineffective despite pilot study success t (65) = 1.43, p= .159. • Exploratory Analyses: • Median split of post-manipulation Cheerfulness score

  17. Cheerfulness Analyses • Median split created High Cheer and Low Cheer score categories • Pattern of means resembled hypothesized results, but not significant

  18. EES Depression Analyses • EES depression subscale scores significantly predicted the total amount of food eaten, b = .327, t (67) = 2.81, p = .006. • Median split of EES Depression scores into High and Low categories • Used to further examine cheerfulness pattern

  19. Discussion and Limitations • Lack of effect of cognitive emotion regulation strategy • Ineffective manipulation • Individual differences in consumption preferences (Macht et al., 2002) • Small sample size (N=68)

  20. Future Research • More powerful manipulation • Selective recruitment of restrained eaters • Confine food choices to food groups that are more clearly dichotomous • Increase environmental validity

  21. Take Away Message • High variability in male eating behavior • Emotional eating research requires a powerful manipulation with strong environmental validity • Emotional eating in general as well as the EES need further empirical study in college male population

  22. Acknowledgements • Dr. Jennifer Tickle (St. Mary’s College of Maryland) • Dr. Catharine Evers (Utrecht University) • Katie Phipps (St. Mary’s College of Maryland)

  23. Questions?

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