Abstract
Emotional eaters are often presumed to eat in response to negative emotions, while positive emotions have been largely neglected. Two studies were conducted to investigate the role of positive mood in emotional eating. The first study induced a positive, negative, or neutral mood, and found increased food intake in a positive compared to a neutral mood in self-reported emotional eaters. No increased food intake was observed in the negative condition. In addition, both emotional and non-emotional eaters showed melioration of mood after eating in a 15-min taste test. In the first 5 min of this taste test, a positive correlation between caloric intake and mood improvement was established. The second study aimed to circumvent problems with self-report measures of emotional eating, and used an implicit measure in the form of two Single-Target Implicit Association Tests (ST-IAT). These assessed food-positive and food-negative associations respectively, to classify participants as emotional or non-emotional eaters. Positive, negative and neutral moods were induced, and milkshake consumption during and after mood induction was measured. Results showed that participants scoring high on both the positive and negative IAT consumed more food after a positive mood induction compared to a negative mood induction. In addition, IAT-positive emotional eaters consumed more food than IAT-non emotional eaters. In contrast to study 1, no effects of a self-report measure of emotional eating were found. These results highlight the importance of positive emotions in emotional eating behaviour.
Published Version
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