Effects of Anxiety on Eating: Does Palatability Moderate Distress-Induced Overeating in Dieters?

Abstract

When confronted with an anxiety-producing threat to self-esteem, restrained eaters (dieters) increase their food consumption. The functional explanation suggests that increased eating temporarily counteracts or masks dysphoria for the restrained eater; externality or stimulus sensitivity theories propose that distress shifts the dieter's attention to external stimulus properties (e.g., taste) and to activities stimulated by such external cues. In an attempt to distinguish between these two explanations, anxious and nonanxious restrained and unrestrained eaters were given palatable and unpalatable foods, and consumption was measured. Results support the functional explanations: Distressed dieters increased their intake of food regardless of taste properties. Theoretical and practical implications for both restrained eating and the behavior of eating disorder patients are discussed.

Full text

Journal
of
Abnormal Psychology
1994, Vol.
103,
No.
3,
505-510
Copyright
1994
by the
American
Psychological
Association,
Inc.
0021-843X/94/S3.00
Effects
of
Anxiety
on
Eating:
Does
Palatability
Moderate
Distress-Induced
Overeating
in
Dieters?
Janet
Polivy,
C.
Peter
Herman,
and
Traci
McFarlane
When confronted with
an
anxiety-producing
threat
to
self-esteem,
restrained
eaters
(dieters)
in-
crease
their food consumption.
The
functional explanation
suggests
that
increased
eating
temporar-
ily
counteracts
or
masks
dysphoria
for the
restrained
eater; externality
or
stimulus sensitivity
theories
propose
that distress
shifts
the
dieter's
attention
to
external stimulus
properties
(e.g.,
taste)
and to
activities stimulated
by
such external cues.
In an
attempt
to
distinguish between
these
two
explana-
tions, anxious
and
nonanxious
restrained
and
unrestrained
eaters
were given
palatable
and
unpalat-
able foods,
and
consumption
was
measured.
Results
support
the
functional explanations:
Distressed
dieters
increased
their intake
of
food
regardless
of
taste
properties.
Theoretical
and
practical
im-
plications
for
both restrained eating
and the
behavior
of
eating
disorder
patients
are
discussed.
Although
distress suppresses eating
in
nondieters (un-
restrained eaters), chronic dieters (restrained eaters)
eat
more
when
they
are
upset (e.g., Baucom
&
Aiken,
1981;
Heatherton,
Herman,
&
Polivy,
1991;
Herman
&
Polivy, 1975; Herman, Pol-
ivy,
Lank,
&
Heatherton, 1987; Ruderman, 1985).
The in-
creased consumption
of
dysphoric dieters
is
especially pro-
nounced when
the
source
of
distress
is a
threat
to the ego or
self-image
(e.g.,
failure
or
performance anxiety)
as
opposed
to
a
physical threat (e.g., anticipated electric shock; Heatherton,
Herman,
&
Polivy,
1991).
Numerous
explanations
of the
enhanced eating
of
distressed
dieters have been
offered.
One of the
earliest,
and
among
the
most
widely
accepted (Orbach, 1978),
was
that eating provides
comfort
to
distressed dieters
(or
obese individuals,
who are
usu-
ally
dieters;
see, e.g., Herman
&
Polivy,
1988b),
as the
psycho-
somatic
hypothesis
of
obesity posited (Kaplan
&
Kaplan,
1957;
McKenna,
1972;
Slochower, 1983). This explanation,
of
course,
does
not
consider eating
to be
comforting
to
nondieters,
or at
least
not
comforting enough
to
offset
the
appetite-suppressing
effects
of the
autonomic activation attendant
on
distress.
A re-
lated
alternative suggests that eating
may
serve
as a
distraction
from
one's worries (Herman
&
Polivy,
1975);
like
the
comfort
hypothesis,
this explanation applies more obviously
to
dieters
(and
to the
obese,
who
also
eat
more when distressed) than
to
normal-weight
nondieters,
who
apparently
do not
derive
enough benefits from eating
to use it as a
"defense"
against
dis-
tress.
A
similar
proposal
by
Herman
and
Polivy (1988a) sug-
gested that overeating serves
a
"masking"
function:
Rather than
dwell
on the
direct threat
to
self-image,
the
dieter,
by
overeating,
Janet
Polivy,
C.
Peter
Herman,
and
Traci McFarlane,
Department
of
Psychology, University
of
Toronto, Erindale
Campus,
Mississauga,
Ontario,
Canada.
This
research
was
supported
by a
grant
to
Janet Polivy
and C.
Peter
Herman
from
the
Social Sciences
and
Humanities Research Council
of
Canada.
Correspondence
concerning this article should
be
addressed
to
Janet
Polivy,
Department
of
Psychology, University
of
Toronto,
Erindale
Campus, Mississauga,
Ontario,
Canada
L5L
1C6.
may
put
him-
or
herself
in a
position
to
misattribute distress
to
the
overeating itself;
the
distress
of
overeating
is
usually easier
to
deal
with
than
is
distress arising
from
more serious threats
to
one's
emotional well-being.
Despite their diversity,
the
foregoing explanations
all
share
a
view
of
distress-induced eating
(or
overeating)
as
purposive:
In
each explanation, eating serves
to
counteract, even
if
only tem-
porarily,
the
original distress.
It
should
be
noted that this theory
does
not
demand that such
efforts
at
self-soothing
be
effective
in
any
long-term sense.
The
distraction hypothesis implicitly
suggests
that
the
reduction
in
anxiety
can
last only
as
long
as the
distraction; once
one
thinks about
one's
anxiety
(as
when
one is
assessing
it on a
rating scale),
it is
likely
to
return
in
full
force.
The
masking theory posits that
the
distress
of a
threat
to
self-
esteem
becomes
misattributed
or
reinterpreted
as
distress
over
having
broken one's diet.
The
distress
is
still present,
but is
sim-
ply
relabeled
in a
preferable manner.
At
best,
the
psychosomatic
hypothesis theorizes that anxiety reduction
will
occur during
eating;
after
eating,
the
individual
may
well
return
to the
origi-
nal
anxiety level.
The
functional
explanations thus
do not
nec-
essarily
predict
a
lasting reduction
in
anxiety
as a
result
of
eat-
ing;
empirically,
a
reduction
in
anxiety
has
proved
to be
elusive
(see,
e.g., Herman
&
Polivy, 1975).
Another
set of
explanations does
not
share this emphasis
on
the
(temporary)
anxiolytic
effects
of
eating; rather, these other
explanations
view
distress-induced eating
in
dieters
or the
obese
not as
purposive,
but as an
unintended consequence
of a
dis-
tress-induced
shift
toward exaggerated control
of
eating
by ex-
ternal
stimuli. Specifically, distress creates
a
more stimulus-
bound
or
external orientation;
in the
presence
of
palatable food
cues, enhanced external
control
of
eating
will generally mean
more eating.
Schachter
and his
colleagues
(e.g.,
Schachter,
1971;
Schachter
&
Rodin, 1974)
offered
an
explanation
for the
overeating
of a
group
of
overweight subjects
(a
population
of
college students
that substantially overlapped
the
population
of
college-student
chronic dieters used
in
most restraint studies; see, e.g., Herman
&
Polivy, 1988b) premised
on
enhanced external stimulus sen-
sitivity.
Schachter
(1971)
saw
this
as a
general trait
of his
obese
505
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