Morbid Obesity, Absorption, Neuroticism, and the High Risk Model of Threat Perception

Abstract

We studied 70 morbidly obese patients, candidates for gastric exclusion surgery. We found that their mean absorption score was significantly lower and that their mean neuroticism score significantly higher than a matched control group. These results are consistent with predictions from the High Risk Model of Threat Perception (Wickramasekera, 1979, 1986, 1988, 1993a). People high in neuroticism are hypothesized to be hypersensitive to threat and, therefore, at greater risk for stress related psychobiological disorders. But if they are also low in absorption, they are hypothesized to have poor conscious perception of psychosocial threats and, therefore, they develop a very restricted range of psychosocial methods of coping with such threats. Consequently, lows may be mainly restricted to behavioral methods of coping like feeding and drinking to self-soothe unconscious aversive emotions associated with autonomic dysregulation and elevated parasympathetic tone. Their skeptical, rational, pragmatic cognitive style drives them to perceive medical surgical solutions to weight gain as more credible than psychosocial weight reduction programs.