Changes in affect longitudinally mediate associations between emotion regulation strategy use and disordered eating

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Clinical Psychology
• Eating Disorder Research

Background:

• Trait-level emotion regulation (ER) difficulties are linked to eating disorders (EDs).
• Limited research exists on how daily ER fluctuations predict ED behaviors or their mediating mechanisms.
• Understanding daily ER is crucial for explaining ED behavior occurrence.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if daily changes in adaptive and maladaptive ER longitudinally predict core ED behaviors (binge eating, purging, dieting).
• To examine if changes in affect mediate the longitudinal effects of ER on ED behaviors.

Main Methods:

• A longitudinal study involving 688 female participants (ages 15-30) from the Michigan State University Twin Registry.
• Participants reported on adaptive/maladaptive ER, negative affect (NA), positive affect (PA), binge eating, purging, and dieting over 49 consecutive days.
• Structural equation modeling was used to analyze within-person fluctuations in ER predicting same- and next-day ED behaviors and affect mediation.

Main Results:

• Greater maladaptive ER predicted increased likelihood of same-day and next-day binge eating and purging.
• Increased next-day negative affect mediated the association between maladaptive ER and next-day binge eating/purging.
• Dieting was more strongly associated with changes in positive affect, while adaptive ER did not predict reduced ED behaviors.

Conclusions:

• Maladaptive ER may longitudinally increase binge eating and purging risk by amplifying negative affect.
• Interventions targeting maladaptive ER and negative affect could disrupt binge eating-purging cycles.
• Positive affect fluctuations may play a distinct role in maintaining restrictive eating behaviors.