Emotional eating and how it relates to dietary restraint, disinhibition, and perceived hunger

During the past decade much research on eating disorders has been devoted to instrument development. Herman and Polivy's 10-item Restraint Scale has been the most widely used instrument, but it has both conceptual and psychometric limitations (Ruderman, 1986). To improve the measurement of restraint, and to combine it with the concept of latent obesity, Stunkard and Messick (1982, 1985) used itemselection and factor-analytic techniques to develop their Eating Inventory (EI). The current paper reports a factor analysis of this instrument on a large sample (N = 442) of relatively unselected, adult women (age 25–40). The results confirm the EI's Dietary Restraint and Perceived Hunger factors. However, the Disinhibition factor split to form two new factors: Weight Lability and Emotional Eating. The Emotional Eating factor may be particularly important because of the growing body of evidence that emotions–perhaps even more than cognitions–affect the eating of obese individuals. The Weight Lability factor was able to differentiate between two obese subgroups, suggesting that it may be useful in research on obesity.