Poster #157 - Attachment Styles and Emotional Eating in Adolescent Girls: Rumination as a Mediator

• In Event: 1-061 - Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Background: Emotional eating (eating in response to negative emotions) is a profound problem, especially among adolescent girls. Individuals who engage in these disordered eating behaviors have been found to be at risk for obesity and weight gain (Bongers & Jansen 2016; Nguyen-Rodriguez et al. 2009). Past research shows there is a significant relationship between emotional eating and attachment styles (Ranzenhofer, Engel, Crosby, Haigney, and Kraft, 2016). Those with insecure attachment experience distress related to their interpersonal relationships and may engage in higher levels of rumination as a result (Chow & Ruhl 2014). Rumination has been shown to be related to emotional eating (disinhibited eating) in ways such as having maladaptive eating behaviors that then lead to negative affect (McGillicuddy, 2015). This study will examine the role of rumination as mediator in the relationship between insecure attachment (anxious and avoidant) and emotional eating. It is hypothesized that insecure attachment will be related to higher engagement in rumination, leading to increased levels of emotional eating.
Methods: For this study, 100 adolescent girls (ages 11-18, M= 14.24, SD= 2.74) and their mothers from the Midwestern metropolitan area participated. Participants completed a short demographics survey which gathered information about their height, weight, and age. Participants were asked to complete a series of questionnaires including the Relationship Structure Questionnaire (ECR-RS; Fraley et al., 2011), Rumination Questionnaire (Treynor, Gonzales, & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2003), and the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (van Strien et al., 1986). All measures have satisfactory reliability.
Results: Both anxious attachment and rumination were significantly correlated with emotional eating. Avoidant attachment alone was significantly correlated with rumination but not emotional eating (see Table 1). Regression analysis was conducted to determine whether rumination mediated the relationship between insecure attachment and emotional eating (see Figure 1). Results show that rumination mediates the relationship between anxious attachment and emotional eating; however, there is not a significant relationship between avoidant attachment and emotional eating or rumination.
Discussion: The results partially support our hypothesis. In this study, girls who reported anxious attachment showed higher engagement in rumination and emotional eating. Adolescents who are anxiously attached appear to engage in ruminative self-blame, preoccupied with recurrent non-positive thoughts about themselves. For these individuals, emotional eating may serve as a coping mechanism to deal with the negative affect associated with this rumination. For adolescent girls in our study, avoidant attachment was not related to rumination or emotional eating. These results have important implications for clinicians working with adolescent girls. Clinicians should be aware that teens who experience anxiety and worry within their interpersonal relationships may be at increased risk for engaging in emotional eating as a coping strategy. Additionally, reducing rumination could be a point of intervention for disinhibited eating behavior or overweight among teens who display anxious attachment.

Authors

• Karess Zhane Taylor, Eastern Michigan University
  Presenting Author

• Ellen Hart, Eastern Michigan University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Chong Man Chow, Eastern Michigan University
  Non-Presenting Author