Emotional eating – A response to or one of the causes of paranoia-like thoughts? The bidirectional mediating role of avoidant coping

Abstract

Paranoia-like thoughts have been found to be associated with maladaptive emotion-focused and avoidant coping strategies. Avoidant coping aim to disconnect from a perceived stressor or to reduce tension indirectly, such as through increased substance use or overeating. Maladaptive coping has also been linked to disturbed eating patterns. However, little is known about eating behaviors related to paranoia-like thoughts, as a potential response to negative emotions and maladaptive ways of coping with them. Hence, a total of 362 people (70.2% women) from a non-clinical sample participated in an online correlation study to investigate whether there was a significant relationship between paranoia-like thoughts (R-GPTS) and eating behavior (TFEQ-13), as well as to investigate whether coping strategies (BRIEF-COPE) mediate this potential association. The results revealed that paranoia-like thoughts correlate with both emotional and uncontrolled eating, but not with cognitive restraint of eating. Moreover, mediation analysis showed that avoidant coping mediates the relationship between paranoia-like thoughts and emotional eating, when both paranoia-like thoughts were a predictor of emotional eating, and emotional eating was a predictor of paranoia-like thoughts. Therefore, our results indicate a bidirectional link between paranoia-like thoughts and emotional eating, and also highlight the important role of avoidant coping in this relationship.