Аннотация:Gender inequality creates an environment where anger suppression is the desired behavior in women. In Russian culture anger is traditionally regarded as a non-feminine emotion and females have more difficulty adaptively expressing anger. Research data demonstrate that anger is a particularly difficult emotion for people with eating disorders (ED): they have higher levels of anger but are less likely to express it. We assume that dieting is one of the forms of emotional regulation helping to control and regulate anger and other emotions. The aim of our research was to investigate the correlation of anger, dieting behavior and disordered eating in Russian women. We examined 313 female patients with binge eating disorder, bulimia nervosa, and OSFED. Methods used for assessment of our sample included NVM (Dutch personality inventory, a variation of MMPI), DEBQ (Dutch Eating Behaviour Questionnaire), EAT-26 (The Eating Attitudes Test), IES-2 (The Intuitive Eating Scale-2). Statistical analysis (Kruskal–Wallis criterion) shows that women with the highest level of anger have the highest points on scales “dieting” (χ2 = 17,036; p = 0,002), “bulimia and food preoccupation” (χ2 = 27,333; p = 0,000), as well as bigger general load of symptoms of eating disorders (χ2 = 21,350; p = 0,000) combined with emotional eating (χ2 = 20,560; p = 0,000), eating in the absence of physical hunger (χ2 = 19,265; p = 0,001), lack of trust to inner signals of hunger/fullness (on the level of tendency - χ2 = 8,767; p = 0,067) and low congruence of food choice (χ2 = 9,911; p = 0,042). These findings demonstrate that women with higher level of anger use dieting behavior to control and regulate socially unaccepted emotion of anger more often. In short term perspective, they receive double social reinforcement. First, they are approved for anger suppression, second - for an attempt to lose weight, cause dieting behavior is assumed in Russian culture an inherent component of femininity. In the long run dieting behavior and suppressed emotions lead to the development of disordered eating patterns (especially bulimic episodes and episodes of emotional overeating) and also distorts the ability to recognize signals of hunger and fullness which finally leads to inability to eat intuitively.
Learning Objectives:
Describe the correlation between higher anger levels and dieting behavior.
Describe the role of dieting behavior as a emotion regulation instrument for cultural inappropriate emotions (anger in women).
Describe the relationship between distorted eating behavior and anger supression.
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