Eating in response to emotions: Alexithymia, emotional eating, and associated psychological mechanisms

McAtamney, Katherine (2024) Eating in response to emotions: Alexithymia, emotional eating, and associated psychological mechanisms. Doctoral thesis, Birmingham City University.

[thumbnail of Katherine McAtamney PhD Thesis_Final Version_Final Award Sept 2024.pdf]

Preview

Text
Katherine McAtamney PhD Thesis_Final Version_Final Award Sept 2024.pdf - Accepted Version
Download (7MB)

Abstract

The overarching objective was to elucidate the relationship between alexithymia and eating in response to emotions. First, a systematic review synthesised the findings of nine eligible articles, providing preliminary evidence for a positive association between alexithymia and self-reported emotional eating. As the Dutch Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (DEBQ-EE) was the subjective emotional eating measure most frequently used by previous research, it became the subject of an exploratory ‘think aloud’ study. This study audio-recorded participants’ spoken aloud thoughts as they completed the DEBQ-EE online. Two cross-sectional studies were conducted to further explore alexithymia and emotional eating using other self-report measures (Emotional Eating Scale [EES] and Salzburg Emotional Eating Scale [SEES]) and identify mechanisms for potential intervention targets. Findings indicated an indirect relationship between alexithymia and emotional eating (EES) via emotion dysregulation, and subsequently a positive conditional indirect effect whereby greater emotion dysregulation and greater self-compassion interacted, leading to greater emotional eating (EES). It was concluded that neither emotion dysregulation nor self-compassion would be appropriate targets for emotional eating interventions. The construct of ‘feeling fat’ was introduced, considered to be a proxy description used when individuals are otherwise unable to identify/describe their negative feelings, and associated with unfavourable outcomes. Existing literature is largely situated within clinical contexts, despite presence within general populations, offering an opportunity to design a brief intervention to test whether encouraging identification and description of feelings would lead to reduced state sensations of feeling fat, within the general population. The findings of the study were unexpected, as despite no significant difference in change scores across groups, the control condition elicited the greatest mean reduction in feeling fat compared to the intervention conditions. A gap in the literature examining the relationship between self-compassion and feeling fat was also examined in this final study, providing preliminary support for an inverse relationship between the traits.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Dates:	Date Event 30 September 2024 Accepted
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Alexithymia, emotional eating, self-compassion, feeling fat, emotion dysregulation
Subjects:	CAH04 - psychology > CAH04-01 - psychology > CAH04-01-01 - psychology (non-specific)
Divisions:	Doctoral Research College > Doctoral Theses Collection Faculty of Business, Law and Social Sciences > College of Psychology
Depositing User:	Jaycie Carter
Date Deposited:	19 Nov 2024 10:40
Last Modified:	19 Nov 2024 10:40
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/15978