How do warmth, safeness and connectedness-related memories and experiences explain disordered eating?

Feeding the inner critic: Self-criticism and shame in the association of affiliative memories with emotional and disordered eating in women

Emotional eating, defined as overeating in response to intense negative emotions, is considered part of a disordered eating continuum, as a milder form of binge eating. It is linked to high emotional dysregulation and risk factors like negative traumatic childhood memories, which have been associated with several negative psychopathological outcomes. Recent research has started to also highlight the negative impact of the lack of early positive memories on psychopathological outcomes, including eating-related disorders. This study explores the role of early affiliative memories on emotional eating, specifically examining whether self-criticism, a strategy to mitigate feelings of shame, is linked to women's tendencies towards emotional and disordered eating attitudes. The study involved 427 female participants. Results show that fluctuations in self-criticism levels are linked to differences in emotional and disordered eating, with higher self-criticism corresponding to more severe emotional and disordered eating. The path analysis showed that a lack of early affiliative memories was associated to emotional and disordered eating, through the mediating roles of internal shame and self-criticism. The model explained 44 % of disordered eating variance, showing an excellent model fit. These findings suggest that internal shame and self-criticism are defensive mechanisms tied to the absence of early affiliative experiences. Self-criticism strategies seem to amplify self-monitoring and negative self-evaluations, leading to emotional eating as a coping mechanism. Clinically, our study incites the development of compassion-focused interventions to address shame and self-criticism, and promote adaptive emotional regulation strategies, preventing emotional eating attitudes and reducing the risk for further disordered eating behaviours.

Early Emotional Experiences and Prosocial Behavior among Chinese Adolescents: The Roles of Psychological Suzhi and Subjective Socioeconomic Status

Prosocial behavior plays a vital role in adolescents’ well-being and social functioning, with the recall of early emotional experiences being a major influence. Positive experiences such as early memories of warmth and safeness (EMWS) contribute to prosocial interpersonal characteristics, whereas adverse experiences such as child psychological abuse and neglect (CPAN) lead to social withdrawal or behavioral problems. The direct effects of EMWS and CPAN on prosocial behavior were investigated in this study, along with the mediation effect of psychological suzhi and the moderation effect of subjective socioeconomic status (SSS). A sample of 948 adolescents (Mage = 14.05 years, SD = 1.68 years; 43.6% females) was randomly recruited to complete self-report questionnaires. Correlation results indicated that EMWS promoted prosocial behavior, whereas CPAN was negatively associated with prosocial behavior. Path analyses confirmed the mediating role of psychological suzhi on the effects of EMWS and CPAN on prosocial behavior. SSS was shown to moderate the effects of EMWS on prosocial behavior and CPAN on psychological suzhi. Compared to lower SSS, higher SSS would reinforce the positive impact of EMWS on prosocial behavior and exacerbate the negative impact of CPAN on psychological suzhi. The current study provided new insight into understanding the underlying mechanisms of prosocial behavior from the perspective of early emotional experiences.

Dimensionality and measurement invariance of the Social Safeness and Pleasure Scale in adolescents from community and residential youth care

BACKGROUND

Social safeness has been proposed as the individual's perception of the social world as being warmth and soothing. The lack of social safeness has been suggested as a transdiagnostic socio-emotional vulnerability for several mental health difficulties. To date there was no study addressing experiences of social safeness in adolescents.

OBJECTIVE

To validate and study the psychometric properties of the Social Safeness and Pleasure Scale to Portuguese adolescents from community and residential care homes.

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING

A total of 731 Portuguese adolescents from community and residential youth care homes participated on this study. The community sample was composed of adolescents recruited from regular schools (208 boys; 224 girls). The residential youth care sample was composed of adolescents placed in residential care homes (145 boys; 154 girls).

METHODS

A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted, and measurement invariance investigated.

RESULTS

A one-factor solution presented a good fit across all samples and proved to be invariant (configural, metric, scalar and strict measurement invariance). Moreover, internal consistency values were excellent for all samples (α > 0.93) and evidence for construct validity in relation to external variables was found. Means comparisons revealed significant differences between all tested groups. Community adolescents reported higher social safeness in comparison to the adolescents placed in residential care. Within both samples, boys scored higher in the SSPS-A when compared to girls.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings provide evidence on the SSPS-A validity and its use across diverse adolescent samples.

Shame and eating disorders symptoms: A meta-analysis

OBJECTIVE

Numerous empirical studies and theoretical models posit that shame is a common experience among individuals across the eating disorder spectrum. In this study we aim to investigate the association between shame and eating disorders symptoms using a meta-analytical approach.

METHOD

In this meta-analysis, we synthesized findings from 195 studies to examine the proposed association between shame and eating disorders symptoms. We looked at the associations with both general eating disorders symptoms and with specific eating disorders symptoms (i.e., anorexic, bulimic, and binge-eating symptoms). Moderation analyses testing for the effect of type of shame, type of eating symptoms, clinical status, quality of the study, age, and gender were conducted.

RESULTS

Shame was significantly associated with a medium to large effect size with all types of eating disorders symptoms (rs between .40 and .52). Body shame (r = .55) and shame around eating (r = .59) were more strongly related with eating disorders pathology. Type of eating disorders symptoms did not moderate the relationship between shame and disturbed eating.

DISCUSSION

Overall, the magnitude of the effect size of the association between shame and eating disorders symptoms is a medium to large one. Body shame and shame around eating seem to be the types of shame most closely tied with eating disorders symptoms, suggesting that directly targeting them in interventions might be highly beneficial. Findings highlight current gaps in the literature (e.g., mostly correlational studies, low quality studies) with implications for future research.

Affiliative interactions and body and eating-related difficulties in adolescent girls: The effects of fears of compassion and feelings of social safeness

The need to examine the associations between emotion regulation and mental health and well-being among adolescents is increasingly recognized. Adolescence is a critical time characterized by increased vulnerability towards emotional struggles and difficulties, especially related with body image and eating behaviours. Thus, it seems particularly important to analyse the processes and mechanisms underlying the relationships between several risk factors (such as the lack of early affiliative memories) and body and eating-related difficulties, in this specific developmental phase. The current study intended to examine whether early affiliative memories are significantly associated with body and eating-related difficulties (i.e., body image shame and eating psychopathology severity), and whether this association is mediated by lower feelings of social safeness and increased levels of fears of receiving compassion from others. This cross-sectional study was conducted with 231 adolescent girls from the community, aged between 12 and 18, who completed self-report measures. Data were examined through descriptive and correlational statistics, and the adequacy of the model was performed via path analysis. Path analysis results revealed that fears of receiving compassion from others and low feelings of social safeness mediated the relationship between early affiliative memories and body and eating-related difficulties. The path model accounted for the variances in the following way: 27% of feelings of social safeness; 23% of fears of receiving compassion from others; 28% of body-image shame; and 54% of eating psychopathology severity, revealing a very good fit. These findings emphasize the relevance of assessing and working on potential processes underlying the adoption of disordered body and eating attitudes and behaviours, not only but especially in female adolescents with scarce recall of early affiliative experiences with close ones.

Bulimic symptoms in a sample of college women: disentangling the roles of body size, body shame and negative urgency

Purpose This study set out to disentangle the roles of body size, body shame and negative urgency on bulimic symptomatology in a sample of college women. We predicted that body shame would mediate the relationship between body size and bulimic symptomatology: with increasing body size, the greater would be the experience of body shame and, in turn, the greater the bulimic symptomatology. We also predicted that negative urgency would exacerbate this mediation pathway, and that the moderated mediation model would occur over and above current levels of depression.

METHOD

A convenience sample of 237 college women indicated their age, height and weight and then completed measures of body shame, negative urgency, depression and bulimic symptomatology. Bootstrap analysis was used to test the predicted moderation mediation model.

RESULTS

The bootstrap analysis supported all predictions. Thus, with greater the increase in body size, the greater was the body shame and the more frequent bulimic symptomatology. Furthermore, negative urgency moderated the relationship between body shame and bulimic symptomatology, such that those with both higher negative urgency and body shame had more frequent bulimic symptomatology.

CONCLUSIONS

Results suggest that those college women higher in both BMI and negative urgency are likely to experience higher levels of bulimic symptoms. These women may benefit from emotion regulation interventions targeted at preventing, as well as coping effectively with, the experience of body shame.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE

V: cross-sectional descriptive study.

The development of a body comparison measure: the CoSS

PURPOSE

This study reports on the development and validation of a brief and widely applicable measure of body comparison (the Comparison of Self-Scale-CoSS), which is a maintaining feature of eating disorders.

METHODS

A sample of 412 adults completed the CoSS, an existing measure of aspects of body comparison, and eating pathology and associated states. Test-retest reliability was examined over 2 weeks.

RESULTS

Exploratory factor analysis showed that 22 CoSS items loaded onto two factors, resulting in two scales-Appearance Comparison and Social Comparison-with strong internal consistency and test-retest reliability.

CONCLUSIONS

In clinical terms, the CoSS was superior to the existing measure of body comparison in accounting for depression and anxiety. Given that it is a relatively brief measure, the CoSS could be useful in the routine assessment of body comparison, and in formulating and treating individuals with body image concerns. However, the measure awaits full clinical validation.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE

Level 3.

Mother-Child and Father-Child Connectedness in Adolescence and Disordered Eating Symptoms in Young Adulthood

PURPOSE

The aim of the study was to examine mother-child connectedness and father-child connectedness in adolescence as potential protective factors against a range of disordered eating symptoms in young adulthood among males and females.

METHODS

This study used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 13,532). Sex-stratified logistic regression models adjusted for demographic covariates were conducted to examine associations of youth-reported mother-child connectedness and father-child connectedness in adolescence (mean age = 15.4 years) with disordered eating symptoms in young adulthood (mean age = 21.8 years).

RESULTS

In this nationally representative sample of U.S. young adults, 7.2% of participants reported binge eating-related concerns, 3.7% reported compensatory behaviors (e.g., self-induced vomiting) to control weight, and 8.6% reported fasting/skipping meals to control weight. Among females, both higher mother-child connectedness and higher father-child connectedness were associated with lower odds of binge eating-related concerns (mother-child: odds ratio [OR] = .83, 95% confidence interval [CI] = .74-.94; father-child: OR = .79, 95% CI = .69-.91), compensatory behaviors (mother-child: OR = .85, 95% CI = .75-.97; father-child: OR = .81, 95% CI = .69-.95), and fasting/skipping meals (mother-child: OR = .79, 95% CI = .72-.87; father-child: OR = .81, 95% CI = .73-.91). No statistically significant associations were observed for mother-child connectedness or father-child connectedness with future disordered eating symptoms among males.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings suggest that improving mother-child connectedness and father-child connectedness in adolescence may be valuable targets for eating disorders intervention, particularly among females.