A study of emotional eating in adolescents: Role of anger and coping

Pages: 835-845
Sangeeta Trama and Baldeep Kaur (Department of Psychology, Punjabi University, Patiala)

Emotional eating occurs when an individual eats to soothe hurt emotions or deals with a stressful situation. Emotional eating may also take place after a rough day at work, an argument with a loved one, or when the kids are running around the house screaming. The present study was a small step in this direction. It attempted to examine the role of perceived stress, anger and coping towards emotional eating in adolescents. The sample of the present study comprised 200 participants (103 males and 97 females). They were selected from various government and private schools and colleges of Patiala district. For studying the role of perceived stress, anger and coping towards emotional eating, the following tools were administered: Perceived Stress Scale [PSS-10; Cohen, 1994], State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-2 (STAXI-2; Spielberger; 1999), Ways of Coping Questionnaire (WOCQ; Folkman & Lazarus, 1988), and the Three Factor Eating Questionnaire Resvised-21 (TFEQ-R21; Karlsson, 2000).In order to analyze the role of perceived stress, anger and coping towards emotional eating in adolescents, product-moment correlations were computed, and stepwise multiple regression analyses were applied. The results revealed that two aspects of coping, viz., self-controlling and escape-avoidance emerged as (negative and positive) predictors of emotional eating in girls. “Self-controlling” aspect of coping accounted for 70% of the variance in female emotional eaters whereas, an additional 5% of the variance in emotional eating was being explained by escape-avoidance. Seeking social support emerged as the main positive predictor of emotional eating in adolescent boys (which explained 72 % of the variance) whereas, two other subscales of coping, viz., self-controlling and accepting responsibility emerged as negative predictors. It was interesting to note that trait anger emerged as a positive predictor of emotional eating in case of adolescent boys (though none of the varied aspects of anger emerged as significant predictors in case of adolescent females). These predictors together accounted for 77% of the variance in emotional eating for adolescent boys. Emotional eating was positively linked with perceived stress, trait anger, and diverse aspects of coping, viz., confronting coping, distancing, seeking social support, escape-avoidance and positive reappraisal. On the other hand, emotional eating was negatively related with anger expression index, two subscales of coping, viz., self-controlling, and accepting responsibility. State anger and planful problem solving were unrelated with all the variables considered in the present investigation, viz., perceived stress, trait anger, anger expression index, all subscales of coping and emotional eating for adolescent girls as well as boys.In sum, the findings indicate that different aspects of anger and/or coping may differentially predict emotional eating in adolescent boys and girls.