Abstract
IntroductionContemporary models of eating disorders (EDs) suggest that EDs are maintained by social–emotional difficulties. However, supporting evidence is derived largely from female, clinic‐based samples. This study, which refrained from gender specific inclusion criteria, aimed to improve understanding of social–emotional functioning in a large community‐based analogue sample of young adults aged 16–26.MethodsFive hundred and forty‐four participants (85.1% female; mean age 21, SD = 4.3) completed the Eating Attitudes Test, Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation, Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, Social Phobia Inventory, Revised Social Anhedonia Scale, Toronto Alexithymia Scale, and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task.ResultsOne hundred and sixty‐four participants scored over the EAT‐26 clinical cutoff, and a two‐way multivariate analysis of covariance found a medium‐sized, statistically significant main effect of group on social–emotional functioning (F(5, 530) = 6.204, p ≤ .001, Wilks' Λ = 0.945, d = 0.48.), suggesting that individuals with significant ED symptoms found it more challenging to notice, label, and regulate emotions in themselves and recognize emotions in others. Gender did not significantly impact social–emotional functioning (F(10, 1,060) = 0.556, p = .850, Wilks' Λ = 0.990), and there was no significant group by gender interaction (F(10, 1,060) = 0.688, p = .737, Wilks' Λ = 0.987).ConclusionThese data suggest that the social–emotional difficulties, particularly with emotion recognition and regulation, present in clinical samples are also evident in young people of all genders with significant disordered eating. Future work could aim to recruit an even more gender‐diverse community sample to further elucidate social–emotional functioning in individuals in the community with significant disordered eating.
Highlights
Contemporary models of eating disorders (EDs) suggest that EDs are maintained by social–emotional difficulties
The social–emotional domain is an area of functioning which patients with EDs find challenging. This domain encompasses a broad range of skills, and one model proposed by Ochsner (2008) suggests that social–emotional functioning might involve the recognition of emotions in oneself and others and theory of mind, emotion regulation, and expression, the inference of emotional states from others’ bodily cues, social skills such as mimicry, and the acquisition of social-affective values and responses
This study aimed to recruit an inclusive analogue sample of young people of any gender identity, reporting a range of sexual orientations to understand whether individuals in the community with significant ED symptoms experience greater difficulties with social–emotional functioning than those without ED symptoms and whether difficulties in social–emotional functioning vary according to gender
Summary
Contemporary models of eating disorders (EDs) suggest that EDs are maintained by social–emotional difficulties. Emotion recognition was measured using the Facial Expression Recognition Task (FERT: Harmer et al, 2003) and those in the high symptom group were less accurate at recognizing happy and neutral faces than those with minimal symptoms These findings are corroborated by another small study from the UK in which Ridout et al (2010) measured emotion recognition using the Awareness of Social Inference Test (McDonald et al, 2011) in females with high (n = 23) and low (n = 22) scores on the Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI; Garner et al, 1983). Those who reported significant ED symptoms recognized significantly fewer emotional expressions than those with minimal symptoms. The conclusions of these otherwise helpful studies on nonclinical populations are frequently limited to small samples of cisgender, heterosexual females
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