Journal
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
Volume 7, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
FRONTIERS MEDIA SA
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01932
Keywords
emotional eating; validity; self-report questionnaires; concerned eating; uncontrolled eating; cue-reactive eating
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Funding
- Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) [453.10.006]
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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.
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