Stressed is desserts spelt backwards

Cam, E. H. (2025) Stressed is desserts spelt backwards. PhD thesis, University of Reading. doi: 10.48683/1926.00127476

Abstract/Summary

Understanding what causes emotional eating has been a great research interest for several decades, as unhealthy food consumption poses detrimental health consequences. Some have argued that control of eating relies on limited cognitive resources, which may be depleted under negative affect. On the other hand, recent theories argued that emotional eating reflects a motivational shift, in which people might prioritise feeling better over long-term health goals. However, these theories have not been sufficiently tested by controlled experimental designs, whilst evidence has been inconsistent. Therefore, we conducted three sets of experimental studies to test these contrasting accounts. Firstly, we tested whether negative affect causes impairments in inhibitory control by inducing negative, positive and neutral affect in food and non-food inhibition tasks. We found that negative affect does not deplete cognitive resources for inhibition; however, it selectively impairs inhibition of unhealthy food for restrained eaters and those with emotion regulation difficulties. Secondly, we tested whether a temporary motivational state to eat healthy as opposed to enjoy food impacts inhibitory control ability. We found that participants were better able to inhibit unhealthy food when in a health-oriented motivational state compared to when in an indulgence state. Lastly, we tested whether people eat emotionally because they believe some unhealthy food is the only available way to improve their negative affect. We found that wanting to feel better resulted in an increased tendency to approach unhealthy food that was believed to improve mood, and decreased inhibition of this food for non-dieters only. Dieters, however, showed difficulties learning that some food may not improve their mood. Overall, we provided experimental evidence that emotional eating reflects a shift in priorities to feel better and to indulge, and impaired inhibition under negative affect reflects emotion regulation difficulties rather than general depletion of cognitive resources.

Item Type	Thesis (PhD)
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/127476
Identification Number/DOI	10.48683/1926.00127476
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences
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