engleski

Can binge eating be defined by perfectionism, self-awareness, negative affect, and avoiding behaviour?

Introduction: Binge eating is recognised as a significant problem within modern societies (Blackburn et al., 2005). It is important to explain what psychological characteristics and experiences put women at risk for disordered eating. Researches showed that binge eaters evaluated themselves in relation to high standards and demanding ideals. These high standards tend to see the self as deficient or unsatisfactory. Such aversive awareness of the self's failures should generate negative affect. The binge eaters are motivated to avoid these negative feelings by using an avoidant style of coping (Heatherton & Baumeister, 1991). Objective: This investigation attempted to explain the relation of high perfectionism, aversive self-awareness, negative affect and coping styles with binge eating. Method: The hypothesis was tested on 400 Croatian female university students, aged 19 to 29 (M=20.6, SD=1.69). Results: Results of stepwise (backward) regression analysis showed that significant predictors of binge eating were: perfectionism, depression, avoidance, appearance fixing and positive rational acceptance. If person has high, demanding, perfectionist standards and depressive tendencies she used more avoidance style or appearance fixing strategy to cope with aversive situations. The consequence of this situation could be binge eating. Conclusion: The empirical findings support the importance of perfectionism, especially setting the high standards, as well as depressive mood and tendency to use avoidance as coping with negative emotions in understanding binge eating behaviour. These data could be used in prevention and treatment of eating disorders.

perfectionism; self-awareness; negative affect; avoiding behaviour

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