Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2016 Dec 8:7:1932.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01932. eCollection 2016.

Emotional Eating Is Not What You Think It Is and Emotional Eating Scales Do Not Measure What You Think They Measure

Peggy Bongers  1 , Anita Jansen  1
Affiliations
Review

Emotional Eating Is Not What You Think It Is and Emotional Eating Scales Do Not Measure What You Think They Measure

Peggy Bongers et al. Front Psychol. .

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.

Keywords: concerned eating; cue-reactive eating; emotional eating; self-report questionnaires; uncontrolled eating; validity.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Adriaanse M. A., Prinsen S., de Witt Huberts J. C., de Ridder D. T. D., Evers C. (2016). ‘I ate too much so I must have been sad’: emotions as a confabulated reason for overeating. Appetite 103, 318–323. 10.1016/j.appet.2016.04.028 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Adriaanse M. A., de Ridder D. T., Evers C. (2011). Emotional eating: eating when emotional or emotional about eating? Psychol. Health 26, 23–39. 10.1080/08870440903207627 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Allison D. B., Heshka S. (1993). Social desirability and response bias in self-reports of “emotional eating.” Eat. Disord. 1, 31–38. 10.1080/10640269308248264 - DOI
    1. Arnow B., Kenardy J., Agras W. S. (1995). The emotional eating scale: the development of a measure to assess coping with negative affect by eating. Int. J. Eat. Disord. 18, 79–90. 10.1002/1098-108X(199507)18:1<79::AID-EAT2260180109>3.0.CO;2-V - DOI - PubMed
    1. Ben-Tovim D. I., Walker M. K., Fok D., Yap E. (1989). An adaptation of the Stroop test for measuring shape and food concerns in eating disorders: a quantitative measure of psychopathology? Int. J. Eat. Disord. 8, 681–687.

LinkOut - more resources