سبک پاسخ و آسیب پذیری به غذا خوردن ناشی از خشم در بزرگسالان چاق

Emotional eating appears to contribute to weight gain, but the characteristics that make one vulnerable to emotional eating remain unclear. The present study examined whether two negative affect response styles, rumination and distraction, influenced palatable food intake following an anger mood induction in normal weight and obese adults. We hypothesized that higher rumination and lower distraction would be associated with greater vulnerability to anger-induced eating, particularly among obese individuals. Sixty-one participants (74% female, mean age = 34.6) underwent neutral and anger mood inductions in counterbalanced order. Directly following each mood induction, participants were provided with 2400 kcal of highly palatable snack foods in the context of a laboratory taste test. Results revealed that distraction influenced energy intake following the mood induction for obese but not normal weight individuals. Obese participants who reported greater use of distraction strategies consumed fewer calories than those reporting less use of distraction strategies. These findings were independent of subjective hunger levels, individual differences in mood responses and trait anger, and other factors. Rumination did not account for changes in energy intake among obese or normal weight participants. Among obese individuals, the tendency to utilize fewer negative affect distraction strategies appears to be associated with vulnerability to eating in response to anger. Future research should determine whether coping skills training can reduce emotional eating tendencies.

The prevalence of obesity has increased dramatically during the past 25 years as the environment has become increasingly obesogenic (Ogden et al., 2006 and Ogden et al., 2008). The identification of individual difference factors associated with overeating and risk for obesity is essential to the development of prevention and treatment approaches (Davis, 2009). Emotional eating, defined as food intake triggered by negative emotional states, is associated with weight gain over the lifespan (Hays & Roberts, 2008). Prior studies have shown that emotional experiences can influence eating behavior in the laboratory (Greeno and Wing, 1994 and Torres and Nowson, 2007) and in naturalistic settings (O'Connor, Jones, Conner, McMillan, & Ferguson, 2008), but these effects may vary substantially according to the type and intensity of the emotional experience (Macht, 1999 and O'Connor et al., 2008). Anger, an emotion state with negative valence, high arousal, and specific cognitive and behavioral tendencies (Cox & Harrison, 2008), has been linked to increased motivation to eat among men (Macht, 1999) and women (Macht & Simons, 2000) and is frequently reported as a trigger of eating on self-report measures (Arnow, Kenardy, & Agras, 1995). However, to our knowledge, no published studies have examined the effects of anger on objectively measured food intake, and the individual difference factors that confer vulnerability to anger-induced eating are unknown. Several functional associations between emotions and eating have been proposed (Macht, 2008), including the use of palatable food to regulate negative affect (Macht, 2008, Spring et al., 2008 and Wallis and Hetherington, 2004). It has been hypothesized that emotional eating may depend on whether more adaptive response strategies are available to an individual (Spoor, Bekker, Van Strien, & van Heck, 2007), with those lacking effective strategies for responding to emotional distress being most vulnerable to emotional eating. The notion that emotional eating may be viewed as a strategy employed to compensate for maladaptive response strategies is consistent with “escape theory” and affect regulatory explanations of emotional eating (Wallis & Hetherington, 2004). In support of this notion, greater reported use of maladaptive or ineffective coping strategies is associated with emotional eating and binge eating among both healthy adults and binge eaters (Evers et al., 2010, Spoor et al., 2007 and Whiteside et al., 2007). Nolen-Hoeksema and colleagues have described two general classes of responses to distressing situations, each of which may confer vulnerability to anger-induced eating. Rumination is a maladaptive strategy that refers to repetitive thinking about the source and consequences of negative affect (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991 and Smith and Alloy, 2009). Rumination is linked to increased experience of negative affect and is thought to contribute to risk for depression (Mor and Winquist, 2002 and Thomsen, 2006). In contrast, distraction is the adaptive strategy of turning attention away from the source or experience of negative affect (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991). For example, one might exercise, listen to music, or engage in a hobby to divert attention away from negative affect. The effectiveness of distraction in regulating emotions was supported in a recent meta-analysis (Augustine & Hemenover, 2009). Studies have demonstrated that response styles modify the intensity of an angry mood, with rumination associated with increased, and distraction with decreased experience of anger during laboratory mood-induction protocols (Rusting & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1998). Distraction and rumination may directly influence vulnerability to emotional eating following anger by either tempering, in the case of distraction, or heightening, in the case of rumination, one's response to an emotionally provocative situation. In one prior study, higher rumination was associated with greater desire to eat following stressful events in naturalistic settings (Kubiak, Vögele, Siering, Schiel, & Weber, 2008). The present study extended prior research linking anger to the subjective motivation to eat by testing the impact of anger on objectively measured palatable food intake among normal weight and obese adults. We also examined whether distraction and rumination response styles are associated with vulnerability to anger-induced eating. Given prior research suggesting that associations between affective traits and emotional eating are specific to overweight or obese individuals (Jansen et al., 2008), we hypothesized that obese individuals with lower self-reported use of distraction and higher reported rumination would demonstrate an increase in palatable food intake following an anger mood induction, whereas the associations between response styles and anger-induced eating would be attenuated or absent among normal weight individuals.