Stress and eating: the effects of ego-threat and cognitive demand on food intake in restrained and emotional eaters

“In line with previous research (Lattimore, 2001), the current investigation suggests that the ego-threatening task is mildly stressful and can disinhibit intake in susceptible individuals. These findings also provide support for Ward and Mann (2000), who proposed that cognitive demand disinhibits eating in restrained…”

“For example, Wallis and Hetherington [65] showed that while restraint was associated with greater food intake after stressors, as commonly found, emotional eating was linked to increased intake only after an ego-threat stressor.”

“…in response to negative emotions, but also to positive emotions (Cools, Schotte, & McNnally, 1992; Tuschen et al., 1993) and cognitive demand (e.g. Wallis & Hetherington, 2004); it remains, however, to be examined whether emotional eaters’ intake can also be increased by positive emotions and…”

“…complex and can be influenced by various factors (e.g., gender, dieting status, types of affect, type and intensity of a stressor, duration of exposure to a stressor, type of food, etc.; Greeno and Wing 1994; Groesz et al. 2012; Macht 1999, 2008; Wagner et al. 2012; Wallis and Hetherington 2004).”

“to disruption of restraint and so overeating, especially of sweet fatty foods [77–80].”

“Wallis and Hetherington (2004) found both variables were important in understanding hyperphagic responses to stress, although, these authors did not directly compare their relative importance.”

“For example, previous research has revealed that emotional eaters are particularly vulnerable to increased eating in response to egothreatening stressors (Wallis & Hetherington, 2004).”

“Results of a recent study indeed suggest that ego-threatening negative affect and high aversive self-awareness contribute to overeating in emotional eaters (Wallis & Hetherington, 2004).”

“Some individuals are more susceptible to stress-induced eating than others and may adopt a self-regulation strategy for coping with aversive states in which attention is shifted away from negative selfappraisal or affect and towards the immediate stimulus environment, such as food [48, 49].”

“…particular, research has found that individuals higher in dietary restraint and emotional eating are more likely to engage in stress-related eating behaviours compared to those lower in these styles (Adriaanse et al., 2011; O’Connor et al., 2008; Torres & Nowson, 2007; Wallis & Hetherington, 2004).”

“Evidence suggests that vulnerable individuals (restrained or emotional females) consume more than others after laboratory manipulations of ego-threatening stress when offered a single food (e.g. Wallis & Hetherington, 2004) and when offered a variety of foods (e.g. Lattimore & Maxwell, 2004).”

“…to depression with the a-typical response of weight gain, a finding that was explained by Herman and Polivy (1980) in terms of ‘emotional turmoil’ disrupting the dietary restraint of the restrained eaters (disinhibition effect; see Wallis and Hetherington (2004) for more possible explanations).”

“Indeed, Wallis and Hetherington (2004) showed that eating chocolate was increased by both ego-threatening and cognitively demanding stressful tasks in restrained eaters, but only by the ego-threatening stress in emotional eaters (defined by DEBQ).”

“…Levine & Marcus, 1997; Michels et al., 2012; Talbot, Maguen, Epel, Metzler, & Neylan, 2013; van Strien, Herman, Anschutz, Engels, & de Weerth, 2012; Wallis & Hetherington, 2004) and negative emotions, such as anxiety and depression (Goossens, Braet, Vlierberghe, & Mels, 2009; Nguyen-Rodriguez,…”

“Feeling stressed influenced food choice towards more palatable and less healthy meals (Costarelli and Patsai, 2012; Wallis and Hetherington, 2004, 2009), while motivation to eat in order to regulate negative affect was associated with an unhealthy dietary pattern (Sproesser et al., 2011).”

“It is widely accepted that the eating behavior in humans changes according to changes in their emotional arousal such as anxiety, anger, joy, depression, sadness and other moods [32–34].”

“Results showed increased chocolate consumption in emotional eaters after the ego-threatening stressor compared to the control condition, but no differences between the cognitive stressor and control (Wallis and Hetherington, 2004).”

“Also Wallis and Hetherington (2004) found that emotional eating was associated with greater chocolate intake after an ego-threatening stressor relative to a control task.”

“Keywords Emotional eating; Scale validity; Body mass index; Obesity; Body weight Introduction Emotional eating is generally viewed as a response to negative emotion (Lindeman & Stark, 2001), ego-threat (Wallis & Hetherington, 2004), or distress (van Strien & Ouwens, 2007).”

“…Laitinen et al., 2002; Lattimore & Maxwell, 2004; Rotenberg & Flood, 1999; Shapiro & Anderson, 2005; Tanofsky-Kraff, Wilfley, & Spurrell, 2000; Wallis & Hetherington, 2004, 2009; Yeomans & Coughlan, 2009), there is less evidence of thismoderating effect in a natural setting (O’Connor et al.,…”

“…foods and to inhibit intake of high-fiber, low fat foods in humans (Epel, Lapidus, McEwen, & Brownell, 2001; Oliver, Wardle, & Gibson, 2000; Wallis & Hetherington, 2004, 2009; Zellner et al., 2006; Zellner, Saito, & Gonzalez, 2007) and in animals (Dallman et al., 2003; Pecoraro, Reyes,…”

“…and dieters have shown that these specific groups of people actually tend to overeat when being in an egothreatening situation, even more so than in other negative situations , like watching frightening movies (Heatherton, Herman, & Polivy, 1991; Lattimore, 2001; Wallis & Hetherington, 2004).”

“For example, researchers have used a Stroop (1935) task consisting of egothreatening words such as ridiculed and inadequate (Wallis & Hetherington, 2004).”

“…retrospective self-report measures, as well as to investigate the effects of acute stress on eating behaviors, other researchers (e.g., Haynes, Lee, & Yeomans, 2003; Schotte, Cools, & McNally, 1990; Wallis & Hetherington, 2004) have measured stress that has been induced in an experimental setting.”

“As regards other psychological factors explaining the stress-eating relationship, cognitive distraction, vulnerability to disinhibition and the type of stressor have been proposed as being influential, in part via interaction with restrained eating [41,42,44,45].”

“…research is to investigate if emotional eaters specifically show increased consumption in response to ego-threatening encounters, and if this is the case (see Wallis & Hetherington, 2004), whether people are more accurate in assessing themselves as emotional eaters in such specific encounters.”

“In contrast, amongnon-emotional eaters, stressors elicit a reduction or no change of eating (Oliver et al., 2000; Wallis and Hetherington, 2004, 2009; Wardle et al., 2000).”

“Some investigators have reported that in a laboratory setting female participants scoring high on measures of restrained eating consume more food after an egothreatening task, when offered either a single food (34) or a variety of foods (35).”

“Stress and depression are also associated with emotional eating, which has been described as increased eating in response to negative affect (Lindeman & Stark, 2001), ego-threat (Wallis & Hetherington, 2004), or distress (van Strien & Ouwens, 2007).”

“(38) who reported that chocolate intake was increased by 15% after a cognitive task (Stroop Test) compared with a control session.”

“However, the escape model of bulimic behaviors has garnered consistent support (e.g., Anestis et al. 2007; Wallis and Hetherington 2004).”

“Emotional eating is thought to be a self-regulation process, where one’s attention is shifted away from negative affect or negative self-appraisals towards an immediately available reward-stimulus such as food [38, 39].”

“The results of the studies conducted in this area have generally confirmed that restrained eaters are likely to eat more when stressed than when unstressed (Greeno and Wing, 1994; Lattimore and Caswell, 2004; Tanofsky-Kraff et al., 2000; Wallis and Hetherington, 2004).”

“The effects of stress on food intake appear to be mediated by dietary restraint, with individuals who are restrained eaters more likely to show increases in food intake when stressed (e.g. Wardle et al., 2000; Wallis & Hetherington, 2004; Zellner et al., 2006).”

“A computerised version of the Stroop task [53] was used to measure executive function in two blocks.”

“People differ in their preferences for spicy, oily, or sweet foods as comfort foods when stressed [40].”

“This result is consistent with the scarce literature that is available that shows that emotional eating is related to a higher frequency of sweet and savoury foods, especially under stress (Konttinen et al., 2010; Oliver et al., 2000; Wallis & Hetherington, 2004).”

“A limitation of the present study is that the degree of dietary restriction was not assessed as it is a common mediator of stress-induced eating (Oliver et al., 2000; Wallis and Hetherington, 2004; Boggiano et al., 2005) and possibly a mediator of eating to cope.”

“However, so-called emotional eaters show the atypical response to distress of eating similar or larger amounts of food (Oliver, Wardle, & Gibson, 2000; van Strien et al., 2013a; van Strien, Herman, Anschutz, Engels, & de Weerth, 2012a; van Strien & Ouwens, 2003; Wallis & Hetherington, 2004).”

“Moreover, our baseline findings are consistent with previous cross-sectional and experimental studies suggesting that emotional eaters have higher BMI than non-emotional eaters, and consume more sweet and energy-dense foods [19,21– 23,47,48].”

“Emotional eating is generally viewed as a response to negative emotion or distress [32,33] or ego-threat [34], and has been associated with overeating, binge eating, bulimia nervosa, and obesity (see [32]).”

“Following standard protocol (e.g. Wallis & Hetherington, 2004, 2009) in order to minimise any condition differences”

“An increase in desire to eat with mental work was observed in our preliminary case study (33), which agrees with the results of Wallis and Hetherington who reported a 15% increase in chocolate intake after a cognitive task compared with a control session (42).”

“Common methods for inducing stress in a laboratory setting include inducing a high cognitive load on the participants (Lattimore, 2001; Wallis & Hetherington, 2004, 2009), or having the participants recall a recent stressful event (Sinha, Catapano, & O'Malley, 1999).”

“This is also consistent with the results of Wallis and Hetherington (2004), who reported that chocolate intake was increased by 15% after a cognitive task (Stroop Test) compared with a control session (Wallis and Hetherington 2004).”

“PLS and cognitive restraint are associated with increased stress-induced comfort food intake and ultimately weight gain and obesity [13,33,35,38,53,56,58,60].”

“…stress, anxiety or sadness, in dieters (Cools, Schotte, & McNally, 1992; Heatherton, Herman, & Polivy, 1991; Loxton, Dawe, & Cahill, 2011; Wallis & Hetherington, 2004), obese people (Patel & Schlundt, 2001; Schneider, Appelhans, Whited, Oleski, & Pagoto, 2010), and obese binge eaters (Agras &…”

“Studies have attempted to identify the influence of emotions on food consumption (27, 28).”

“Feelings of stress influenced food choices toward more palatable and less healthy meals [49,50], while motivation to eat to regulate negativity was associated with an unhealthy eating pattern [51].”

“In another study, Wallis and Hetherington [20] found self-reported emotional eating predicted perceived food intake.”

“The notion that emotional eatingmay be viewed as a strategy employed to compensate for maladaptive response strategies is consistent with “escape theory” and affect regulatory explanations of emotional eating (Wallis & Hetherington, 2004).”

“…Musher-Eizenman, Leporc, Holub, & Charles, 2009; Faith, Scanlon, Birch, Francis, & Sherry, 2004; Topham et al., 2011) and personal factors, including stress level, stress coping styles, and personality (Elfhag & Morey, 2008; Larsen, van Strien, Eisenga, & Engels, 2006; Wallis & Hetherington, 2004).”

“26 Beiter et al 27 suggested that sources of anxiety and stressors in individuals between ages 18 and 24 were related to academic performance, the pressure to succeed, and postgraduation concerns.”