The relationship between negative urgency and abnormal eating patterns: Mediator role of emotion regulation deficits and moderator role of eating expectancies

Emotional eating and external eating are abnormal eating patterns that have been defined to explain individuals' overeating tendencies. One of the significant predictors of abnormal eating patterns is negative urgency (NU), the tendency to engage in rush actions in response to negative emotions. Although NU's relation to abnormal eating patterns is well established, the mechanism of this relationship still needs clarification. Previous research suggested that emotion regulation deficits (ERD) could be a mechanism to understand NU's relation to abnormal eating patterns and eating expectancies might further increase the risk for abnormal eating patterns when combined with other risk factors. The current study explored the direct and indirect associations between NU and abnormal eating patterns and the mediator role of ERD. Additionally, the moderator role of eating expectancies in the relationships between NU and abnormal eating patterns, and ERD and abnormal eating patterns were examined. The participants were 653 Turkish adults (536 women), whose ages ranged from 18 to 68 (M= 33.15, SD=12.63). The results revealed a significant and positive association of NU with both emotional eating and external eating. Moreover, mediation analyses results showed that ERD mediated the relationship between NU and emotional eating but did not mediate the relationship between NU and external eating. Furthermore, eating expectancies only moderated the relationship between NU and emotional eating. No significant moderator effect of eating expectancies was observed for external eating. Results emphasize the importance of targeting NU, ERD, and eating expectancies in the prevention or treatment of abnormal eating patterns.