Are Oral, Obsessive, and Hysterical Personality Traits Related to Disturbed Eating Patterns? A General Population Study of 6,313 Men and Women

Abstract

In this study, we explored 3 psychodynamically defined personality traits as predictors of eating disturbances among men and women in the general population. The Basic Character Inventory (Torgersen, 1980) was used to measure oral, obsessive, and hysteria traits along with the Eating Disturbance Scale (Rosenvinge et al., 2001). Oral personality factors were the primary predictors of eating disturbances in both genders-both men and women with eating disturbances tended to score highly on measures of emotional instability, self-doubt, compliance, and sensitivity. In women, the presence of oral personality factors in addition to the absence of the obsessive factor Parsimony accounted for 16% of the variance in eating disturbances. In men, oral personality factors in addition to the presence of the hysterical factor Imagination accounted for 13% of the variance in eating disturbances. This last finding suggests that, in addition to oral characteristics, men with eating disturbances may exhibit dissociative traits and imaginative absorption.