Eating attitudes and behaviors in healthy population: The role of cognitive flexibility and perfectionism

It has been observed that there is a limited number of studies in which eating attitudes and behaviors are examined together with cognitive flexibility and perfectionism variables and in which eating attitudes/behaviors are examined in healthy populations. This study, the relationship between eating attitudes/behaviors and perfectionism and cognitive flexibility levels of 220 participants who did not have a diagnosis of psychiatric and neurological disorders and had normal body weight according to body mass indexes were examined. Participants who agreed to participate in this study were given the "Eating Attitude Test (EAT-26)", "Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ)", "Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (FMPS)" and "Cognitive Flexibility Inventory (CFI)" self-report scales. Additionally, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) was administered to assess cognitive flexibility in a face-to-face session (n = 50). Our sample was categorized into groups based on healthy and unhealthy eating attitudes using the EAT cut-off score, then compared across sociodemographic characteristics and performance on FMPS, CFI, and WCST. While "Pearson Correlation Analysis" examined pairwise relationships between variables, mediation analysis using "Process Macro" explored the mediating role of cognitive flexibility between perfectionism and eating attitudes/behaviors. Results indicated no gender differences in eating attitudes/behaviors or perfectionism (p > 0.05), but women exhibited higher levels of healthy perfectionism (z = -6.10; p = 0.00). Furthermore, a decrease in participants' perfectionistic traits was observed with increasing age. The study concluded that perfectionism significantly influences eating attitudes/behaviors (p < 0.05), whereas cognitive flexibility did not mediate this relationship (p > 0.05). These findings underscore the importance of addressing perfectionism in interventions targeting eating attitudes/behaviors.