[Binge eating disorder: Links with personality and emotionality]

Our two objectives were: (1) to investigate the relationship between binge eating disorder, dimensions of personality (according to the Big Five model of Costa and McCrae) and those of emotionality in the "tripartite" model of emotions of Watson and Clark; (2) to evaluate the correspondence between the Binge Eating Scale (BES) and the Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI-2) scores.

Four self-administered questionnaires were completed on a shared doc website: the EDI-2, the BES, the BFI-Fr (Big Five Inventory-French version) and the EPN-31 (Positive and Negative Emotionality Scale). The analyses were conducted in a sample of 101 participants (36 men and 65 women), aged 20-59 years (mean age=35.28±9.76) from the general population.

We found that 11% of the participants had moderate to severe binge eating disorder. Among them, nearly 4% were overweight and 4% were obese. The correlations analyses indicated that binge eating disorder was associated with two dimensions of personality, the neuroticism (P=0.001) and the consciousness (P=0.010), and with the emotions of joy (P=0.008), tenderness (P=0.036), fear (P=0.011), shame (P<0.001) and sadness (P=0.009). From a comparative perspective, participants with binge eating disorder get higher scores on EDI-2 subscales: search for thinness (P=0.001), bulimia (P<0.001), dissatisfaction with the body (P<0.001) and interceptive awareness (P<0.001).

These results suggest that binge eating disorder is associated with negative affectivity both as a personality dimension and as an emotional feeling. The patterns of associations, observed with the EDI scale, seem to confirm the good convergent validity of the Binge Eating Scale. Thus, like other eating disorders, emotional functioning should be a prime target for prevention and treatment.