Association of Cognitive Emotion Regulation Profiles with Disordered Eating Attitudes in a Cross-Sectional Sample of Adolescents

Eating disorders are a significant public health problem that typically emerge during adolescence. Attitudes regarding eating related behavior, such as preoccupation with food and weight gain and excessive control of food intake, have been shown to contribute to the development of eating problems. It is possible that cognitive emotion regulation strategies related to other mental health disorders may also influence eating related behavior attitudes and contribute to the development of eating disorders. However, very little research has considered how these strategies link to these attitudes. Exploring these associations may be critical for designing and refining programming for adolescents to prevent the onset of eating problems and facilitate healthy eating behavior. Thus, we identified latent profiles of cognitive emotion regulation strategies among adolescents and evaluated how these profiles differentiated eating related attitudes.

Participants were 420 adolescents 11- to 18-years-old (M=14.54, SD=2.07, 57% female; 44% Caucasian/White) enrolled in schools in a small, rural community in the United States. Participants completed the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire-Short (CERQ-S; Garnefski & Kraaij, 2006) and the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-18; Maïano et al., 2013) during school hours. The CERQ-S is an eighteen item self-report measure consisting of nine coping strategies: Self-blame, Other-blame, Rumination, Catastrophizing, Putting into Perspective, Acceptance, Positive Refocusing, Positive Reappraisal, and Refocus on Planning. Individuals rate use of coping strategies from “1-Almost Never” to “5-Almost Always”. The EAT-18 included 18 items and a scale of “1-Never” to “6-Always”. Four subscales are used here: Fear of Getting Fat, Eating-Related Control, Food Preoccupation, and Eating-Related Guilt. Psychometric characteristics were strong for both measures.

Latent profile analyses of cognitive emotion regulation strategies were conducted with Mplus version 7.3 controlling for gender, school grade, and race/ethnicity. Fit statistics supported a five class solution: Low Strategy Use, Moderate Strategy Use, High Strategy Use, High Negative/Low Positive Use, Low Negative/High Positive Use. Profiles showed differentiation of eating related attitudes. Adolescents in the High Strategy Use profile had significantly higher scores on Fear of Getting Fat, Eating-Related Control, Eating-Related Guilt, and Food Preoccupation. Adolescents in the High Negative/Low Positive Use profile had significantly higher scores on Fear of Getting Fat, Eating-Related Control, and Eating-Related Guilt.

Results indicate that negative coping strategies such as catastrophizing, rumination, and self-blame may strongly relate to eating related attitudes for adolescents. These negative coping strategies may overwhelm the effect of positive coping strategies such as positive reappraisal, positive refocusing, and acceptance on eating related attitudes.