Authors: Angela Nuțu, Leon Zăgrean
Affiliation
Discipline of Physiology and Neuroscience, Faculty of Medicine, “Carol Davila” University of Medicine
and Pharmacy, Bucharest, Romania
Abstract
Background. Globally, the tendency to obesity shows an alarming increase, turning into a health problem with multiple and serious implications. Thus, it is necessary to find effective solutions and approaches to solve or prevent it.
Aims. The present study aims to investigate the mediating role of emotional eating, uncontrolled eating, and cognitive restriction in the relationship between conscientiousness, neuroticism, and self-esteem on the one hand and BMI on the other.
Methods. For this, data were collected from 166 people from a non-clinical population and statistically analyzed.
Results. The results we obtained show that neuroticism, conscientiousness and low self-esteem are not directly associated with BMI. However, we found that emotional eating mediates the relationship between the three traits and BMI, in all the analyses. Also, uncontrolled eating mediates these relationships only when tested independently of emotional eating. Cognitive restriction does not mediate these relationships.
Conclusions. Thus, our study supports the idea that there are indirect relationships between personality traits and BMI, mediated by emotional eating. As regards uncontrolled eating, we cannot draw definitive conclusions. These conclusions are of interest both for theoretical models, as they may contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between personality traits and body weight, and for practical interventions, as they may indicate which mechanisms can be utilized to reduce the weight problems faced by an increasing number of people.
Keywords: personality, conscientiousness, neuroticism, self-esteem, TFEQ, BMI.
