Sensation seeking: a personality trait characteristic of adolescent girls and young women with eating disorders?

Abstract

The aim of the following study was to evaluate the role of sensation seeking in eating disorders (anorexia and bulimia), taking into account the subtypes (purging versus nonpurging) and the concept of binge-eating disorder. The study involved 141 adolescent girls and young women, aged 14 to 25 years who lived in the French speaking part of Switzerland (79 clinical subjects with eating disorders according to DSM-IV criteria, and 62 control subjects without eating disorders from the general population). All the subjects completed the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS, Zuckerman, 1971). The results show that subjects with bulimic behaviours characterized by recurrent episodes of binge-eating, whatever their exact diagnosis and subtype, do not significantly differ from one another on the Sensation Seeking Scale. They all had higher scores than the control group especially on the ‘Thrill and Adventure Seeking’ dimension. In contrast, restricting anorexics had lower scores on the Sensation Seeking Scale than the control group, especially on the ‘Experience Seeking’ dimension. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.