Division of Applied Psychology, School of Humanities and Social Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518172, PR China.
Department of Education Psychology, Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA.
Eat Behav. 2024 Aug;54:101899. doi: 10.1016/j.eatbeh.2024.101899. Epub 2024 Jun 23.
Previous research identified four patterns of negative emotional eating in American and Chinese university students and proposed future directions (e.g., exploring potential differences in emotion regulation across patterns and replicating the patterns in a general, non-student population). Furthermore, prior research has not explored group differences in muscularity-oriented eating disorder symptomatology or psychosocial impairment. Therefore, the present study addressed these gaps in a sample of general Chinese adults, further testing group differences in typical and muscularity-oriented eating disorder symptomatology, psychosocial impairment, and emotion regulation difficulties across patterns of negative emotional eating. A total of 600 Chinese adults were recruited. Latent class analysis (LCA) was used. Results replicated the four patterns of negative emotional eating in previous research, including non-emotional eating (non-EE), emotional over- and under-eating (EOE-EUE), emotional over-eating (EOE), and emotional under-eating (EUE). Significant class differences were identified in eating disorder symptomatology, psychosocial impairment, and emotion regulation difficulties. Specifically, individuals with EOE and EOE-EUE patterns exhibited higher eating disorder symptomatology, higher psychosocial impairment, and more emotion regulation difficulties than those with non-EE and EUE patterns. Therefore, these two classes (i.e., EOE and EOE-EUE), especially the poorly researched EOE-EUE group, should be further examined to elucidate research and clinical applications. Furthermore, findings underscore the role of emotion regulation difficulties in further describing the differences across these negative emotional eating patterns, which can be considered in future interventions for reducing negative emotional eating.
先前的研究在美中两国大学生群体中识别出四种负性情绪性进食模式，并提出了未来的研究方向（例如，探索不同模式下情绪调节的潜在差异，并在一般非学生群体中复制这些模式）。此外，先前的研究尚未探索肌肉发达型进食障碍症状和心理社会功能损害在群体间的差异。因此，本研究在一般中国成年人样本中探讨了这些差异，进一步检验了负性情绪性进食模式间典型和肌肉发达型进食障碍症状、心理社会功能损害和情绪调节困难的群体差异。共招募了 600 名中国成年人。采用潜在类别分析（LCA）。结果复制了先前研究中四种负性情绪性进食模式，包括非情绪性进食（非 EE）、情绪性过度和不足进食（EEO-EUE）、情绪性过度进食（EEO）和情绪性不足进食（EUE）。在进食障碍症状、心理社会功能损害和情绪调节困难方面存在显著的类别差异。具体而言，与非 EE 和 EUE 模式相比，EEO 和 EEO-EUE 模式的个体表现出更高的进食障碍症状、更高的心理社会功能损害和更多的情绪调节困难。因此，这两个类别（即 EEO 和 EEO-EUE），尤其是研究较少的 EEO-EUE 群体，应进一步研究，以阐明研究和临床应用。此外，研究结果强调了情绪调节困难在进一步描述这些负性情绪性进食模式间差异方面的作用，这可以在未来减少负性情绪性进食的干预措施中加以考虑。
