Personality and Family-Environment Predictors of Self-Reported Eating Attitudes and Behaviors

Abstract

We assessed the contributions of personality and family environment to variations in self-reported eating attitudes and behaviors. Female college undergraduates (N = 137) completed the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI; Costa & McCrae, 1985), Family Environment Scale (Moos & Moos, 1986), Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI; Garner & Olmsted, 1984), and revised Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26; Garner, Olmsted, Bohr, & Garfinkel, 1982). Correlation and multiple regression analyses showed that among the personality variables, NEO-PI Neuroticism and Extraversion made the largest unique contributions to the EDI subscales and EAT-26. The family-environment measures made significant contributions to those, EDI subscales that are reflective of broader emotional and interpersonal problems, rather than eating disorders per se. Suppression effects were found for NEO-PI Extraversion and Neuroticism, underscoring the need for researchers to assess comprehensive sets of etiologic factors--and associations among them--to properly interpret complex predictor/criterion relationships.

The association between the body mass index of first-year female university students and their weight-related perceptions and practices, psychological health, physical activity and other physical health indicators

“…Our prevalence of high scorers (8.4%) was also lower than figures reported for female students from other university samples, ranging from 17 to 21.9% 16,17,64,67 . These results indicate that disordered eating is possibly not such a prominent concern during a student's first year.…”

Relationships among attachment styles, personality characteristics, and disordered eating

“…This corroborates longitudinal research which found that personality prospectively predicts the development of eating pathology. [36][37][38] Taken together, findings from all three models indicate that although personality may have direct effects on disordered eating [16][17][18][19] and may be influenced by eating pathology, 39 associations between attachment and disordered eating are mediated by personality characteristics rather than the reverse.…”

A cross‐cultural comparison of the eating disorder inventory

“…It is well documented that sufferers of anorexia and bulimia have, compared with normal individuals, a significantly elevated level of neuroticism. 105,106,[131][132][133] The correlation between EDI subscales and neuroticism is generally so strong that it is possible to consider eating disorder symptoms an aspect of neurotic personality dispositions. 105 In culture-level analysis, several non-Western cultures such as the Japanese, Koreans, and the Chinese score very high on the dimension related to neuroticism, while many prominent Western cultures such as Americans, the Dutch, and Swedes score low on neuroticism.…”