Unsupportive social interactions influence emotional eating behaviors. The role of coping styles as mediators

Psychopathologies, such as depression, are frequently accompanied by poor coping strategies, including impaired social support resources. As well, unsupportive social interactions have been related to adverse health outcomes beyond any contribution of limited social support resources. There is reason to believe that increased eating associated with stressors represents a method of coping, albeit one that has negative consequences. The present investigation examined the relation between both unsupportive and supportive social interactions and emotional eating, and assessed whether this relationship was mediated by individual coping styles. Study 1 (N = 221) indicated that unsupportive social interactions were associated with emotional eating, and with emotion- and avoidant-focused coping. Furthermore, multiple mediation analyses indicated that emotion-focused coping mediated the relation between unsupportive social interactions and emotional eating. Study 2 (N = 169) replicated these findings, and also indicated that these effects were above and beyond those of social support and depressive symptomatology. Thus unsupportive social interactions may have implications for health outcomes and behaviors, beyond mood disorder symptomatology. The observed relations can be explained by theories of affect-regulation such as negative urgency and expectancy theory as well as on the basis of biological processes associated with eating and stress responses.

• Emotional coping mediated the relationship between unsupport and emotional eating.
• Unsupport predicted emotional eating behavior above the effects of social support and depressive symptomatology.
• Unsupport itself may act as a stressor.
• Distress-relief processes might underlie the influence of emotional coping on emotional eating.