Gender differences in the role of alexithymia and emotional expressivity in disordered eating |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Psychology, North Dakota State University, Minard 232, Fargo, ND 58108, USA;2. Neuropsychiatric Research Institute, 120 8th Street S., Fargo, ND 58102, USA;3. Eating Disorders Clinical and Research Program, Massachusetts General Hospital, 2 Longfellow Place, Suite 200, Boston, MA 02114, USA;4. Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, 401 Park Drive, Boston, MA 02215, USA;5. Department of Counseling and Applied Educational Psychology, Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA;1. “Studi Cognitivi” Post-graduate Cognitive Psychotherapy School Research Group, Foro Buonaparte, 57, 20121 Milano, Italy;2. “GNOSIS” Research and Psychotherapy Group V, Cottolengo 19, Mondovì, Italy;3. IRCSS, Institute of Neurological Sciences and Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy;4. Department of Psychiatry, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA;1. Department of Neuroscience, Psychiatry Unit, Università degli Studi di Parma, Parma, Italy;2. Mental Health Department, AUSL, Parma, Italy;3. Department of Cardiology, Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria di Parma, Parma, Italy |
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| Abstract: | Disordered eating habits such as binge-eating, purging, and extreme diet restriction have been linked to a variety of deficits in emotion regulation. Two such aspects of emotion regulation are alexithymia and emotional expressivity, although much of the research is limited to females. This study examines associations between these aspects of emotion regulation and symptoms of bulimia nervosa (BN) in men and women. Participants were 201 female and male undergraduates who completed self-report measures of emotion regulation and BN symptoms. Consistent with prior research, results indicate that alexithymia predicted BN symptoms in females, but not in the presence of emotional expressivity, which proved to be the only unique predictor of BN symptoms. In the male sample, alexithymia predicted BN symptoms over and above emotional expressivity. These findings suggest that BN symptoms in males may partly be explained by one facet of emotion regulation, but they also highlight important gender differences in disordered eating. Future research should further examine the role of emotion regulation in eating pathology in males. |
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| Keywords: | Gender differences Alexithymia Emotional expressivity Bulimia nervosa |
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