The mediator role of perceived stress in the relationship between social appearance anxiety and emotional eating

The aim of this study is to determine the mediating effect of perceived stress in the relationship between social appearance anxiety and emotional eating. In addition, examining the relationships between social appearance anxiety, emotional eating and perceived stress variables, the relationships between these variables with age and body mass index, and whether they differ according to some sociodemographic information constitute the sub-objectives of the research. This research was designed with the relational survey method, one of the descriptive analyses. Social appearance anxiety was determined as independent variable, emotional eating dependent variable and perceived stress as mediator variable. The sample group of the study consists of 254 volunteer participants, 180 of whom are women (70.9%) and 74 of them (29.1) are between the ages of 18-50. In the collection of research data; Social Appearance Anxiety Inventory (SSS), Emotional Eating Inventory (DES) and Perceived Stress Inventory (PSS) were used to measure. In addition to these scales, a Personal Information Form prepared by the researcher was used to evaluate sociodemographic characteristics. The data of the research were analyzed using SPSS 21.0 and AMOS 20.0 programs. Independent Groups t-Test and ANOVA to determine whether the variables assumed to be normally distributed differ according to sociodemographic variables; Mann Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis tests, which are non-parametric tests, were used to determine whether the variables not in the range of -1.5 to 1.5 differ according to sociodemographic variables. Pearson Product-Moment Correlation was used to analyze the relationships between variables. Finally, the mediating effect of perceived stress on the relationship between social appearance anxiety and emotional eating was tested with the structural equation model (SEM) and the Sobel Test was applied to measure the significance of the mediating variable. As a result of the research, there is a difference in social appearance anxiety and emotional eating according to gender, but there is no difference in perceived stress; According to marital status, there is no difference in social appearance anxiety and emotional eating, there is a difference in perceived stress; there is a difference in social appearance anxiety and perceived stress according to education level, there is no difference in emotional eating; social appearance anxiety, emotional eating and perceived stress differ according to how people see themselves; there is a difference in social appearance anxiety and emotional eating according to weight satisfaction, there is no difference in perceived stress; According to satisfaction with physical appearance, social appearance anxiety, emotional eating and perceived stress differ. When examining whether there is a correlation between the variables and age and BMI, no relationship was found between age and emotional eating. There was a weak negative relationship between social appearance anxiety and perceived stress; No relationship was found between BMI and perceived stress, but a weak positive relationship was found between social appearance anxiety and emotional eating. When the relationships between social appearance anxiety, emotional eating and perceived stres are examined, the relationship between social appearance anxiety and emotional eating is positive; The relationship between perceived stress and emotional eating was found to be positive, and the relationship between social appearance anxiety and perceived stress was found to be positively significant. In addition, it was concluded that perceived stress did not have a mediating role in the relationship between social appearance anxiety and emotional eating.