The implicit association task as a measure of emotional eating

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For many years, emotional eating has been measured by means of self-report questionnaires, which retrospectively measure eating in response to (mainly negative) emotions. However, some researchers suggest that these questionnaires may not be the best way to assess emotional eating, as people are generally not very good at recalling their emotions, their eating behaviour, and the association between the two. In addition, because the concept of ‘emotional eating’ has gained notion in the general population, people might be biased when filling out these questionnaires. Recent studies found that scores on emotional eating scales are poor predictors of food intake after experiencing negative or positive emotions, which could be explained by the aforementioned problems with these scales. The present (ongoing) study investigates the usefulness of a single-category Implicit Association Test (IAT) as a measure of emotional eating. This IAT consists of neutral words, positive emotional words, negative emotional words, and food pictures. Participants perform the IAT, and subsequently watch a neutral, happy or sad film excerpt to induce a neutral, positive or negative mood, respectively. Food intake is then measured by means of an alleged taste test. We hypothesize (1) that participants identified by the IAT as emotional eaters consume more food in the emotion conditions than in the control condition, and (2) that in the emotion conditions, the emotional eaters show higher food intake than non-emotional eaters. Results will be discussed at the meeting.