Eating me up inside

Abstract

Recent research has shown that attachment anxiety (a model of interpersonal relationships characterised by a fear of abandonment) is a good predictor of disinhibited eating and, in turn, body mass index. However, this association has yet to be explored within an eating episode. The present study investigated the effect of priming attachment security and attachment anxiety on food intake. Normal weight participants (N = 21) were primed with security and anxiety on separate occasions and given ad libitum access to a snack food. Priming anxiety led to a significantly higher food intake than priming security (p = .016). We suggest that participants consumed more food in response to the anxious prime in an attempt to manage the resulting feelings of insecurity. These results provide behavioural evidence for a link between attachment anxiety and disinhibited eating.

“Don’t bring me down”

“…A potential limitation of this study was that we did not include an explicit manipulation check asking participants about their thoughts and mood following the priming procedure. However, we used a common priming procedure that has been used in other published studies (e.g., Bartz & Lydon, 2004;Birnbaum, Simpson, Weisberg, Barnea, & Assulin-Simhon, 2012;Wilkinson, Rowe & Heath, 2013); notably, not all studies using this procedure have included a manipulation check (Birnbaum et al, 2012;Mikulincer, Shaver, & Rom, 2011). Although we did not ask participants to report their feelings, we did ask them what they thought the study was about.…”

Attachment and eating: A meta-analytic review of the relevance of attachment for unhealthy and healthy eating behaviors in the general population

“…In other words, children and adults rely on eating in the absence of being able to rely on the care and support of close others; eating allows them to escape from and deal with negative affect and physiological stress effects-ultimately it allows them to feel better (Anderson, Gooze, Lemeshow, & Whitaker, 2012;S. Han & Pistole, 2014;Stenhammar et al, 2010;Tasca & Balfour, 2014;Wilkinson, Rowe, & Heath, 2013). This cycle is maintained through negative reinforcement-eating makes negative affect and uneasiness go away, even if so momentarily (Haedt-Matt & Keel, 2011).…”

“…Attachment orientation was measured as an enduring trait (Ravitz et al, 2010) in all but one study which also primed attachment style (Wilkinson et al, 2013). As such, the majority of publications relied on questionnaires to assess this construct (k = 66).…”

“…36 studies used attachment interviews, k = (Barone & Guiducci, 2009; C. R. Davis et al, 2014;Lockwood, 2004) and a prime, k = 1 (Wilkinson et al, 2013). Although various questionnaires were used to assess attachment orientation, approximately one third of the studies relied on the Experience in Close Relationships questionnaire (Fraley, Waller, & Brennan, 2000;Wei, Russell, Mallinckrodt, & Vogel, 2007).…”

Investigation of Attachment Orientation, and Affect Regulation: Use of a Novel Affect Regulation Mapping Tool in Japanese Athletes

“…Individuals high in attachment anxiety are relatively poor at managing their emotions. The attachment system in high attachment anxious individuals is hyperactivated, which means they become hypervigilant to distressing cues in their environment (Mikulincer & Florian, 1998), and they will seek an external source of comfort such as food (e.g., Faber et al, 2018;Wilkinson et al, 2010Wilkinson et al, , 2013Wilkinson et al, , 2018Wilkinson et al, , 2020 to soothe, distract, or excite (Maunder & Hunter, 2001).…”