Investigation of the relationship between eating attitude and attachment style, alexithymia and obsessive compulsive symptoms

The study of the factors causing changes in eating attitude and those that may result in eating disorders are frequently studied in clinical psychology. Besides the role of the formed attachment during an early age and their effects during adulthood period, the capability of defining emotions and obsessive compulsive symptoms are shown to be connected with disordered eating attitudes. The purpose of this study is to facilitate the understanding of the predictive role of alexithymia and attachment styles on eating attitude and their relation with obsessive compulsive symptoms. Also, the effects of sociodemographic and other factors on attachment styles, alexithymia, obsessive compulsive symptoms and on eating attitude were investigated. In this study, the data were obtained from 248 participants (131 women, 117 men) between ages of 18 and 45, without psychological diagnosis. Data were obtained through an online survey form including the Sociodemographic and Other Information Form, Three Dimensional Attachment Style Scale (TDASS), Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), Maudsley Obsessive Compulsive Inventory (MOCI) and Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26). Descriptive analysis was used to determine the sociodemographic and other variables, non-parametric tests were used to test the effects of those variables on dependent and independent variables, correlation analysis were caried out to test the relation with obsessive compulsive symptoms and simple linear and multiple regression analysis were used to test predictiveness of attachment styles and alexithymia on disordered eating attitude. According to the findings, alexithymia is the most powerful positive predictor of disordered eating attitude. Additionally, the avoidant attachment style also predicts eating attitude in a positive direction. Finally, there is a positive relation between obsessive compulsive symptoms and disordered eating attitude. Being able to reveal such relationships in healthy subjects at a preclinical stage is not only important in order to define factors contributing to the pathology of eating disorders but helps to raise awareness, which is crucial to develop preventive strategies in the treatment of eating disorders and allows prognosis in the long-term.