Unique associations between young adult men's emotional functioning and their body dissatisfaction and disordered eating

• Emotion regulation difficulties uniquely predicted men's muscularity dissatisfaction.
• Emotion regulation difficulties uniquely predicted men's disordered eating.
• An attentional bias toward rejecting faces predicted muscularity dissatisfaction.
• Emotion recognition did not uniquely predict body dissatisfaction or disordered eating.
• Negative affect did not uniquely predict body dissatisfaction or disordered eating.

Research on emotional functioning, body dissatisfaction, and disordered eating in males is predominated by studies of negative affect and emotion regulation. Other aspects of emotional functioning, namely emotion recognition and attentional biases toward emotional stimuli, have received little empirical attention. The present study investigated the unique associations between different aspects of men's emotional functioning and their disordered eating attitudes, muscularity dissatisfaction, and body fat dissatisfaction. Results from 132 male undergraduates showed that muscularity dissatisfaction was uniquely associated with both emotion regulation difficulties and an attentional bias toward rejecting faces. Body fat dissatisfaction was not uniquely associated with any aspect of emotional functioning. Disordered eating was uniquely associated with emotion regulation difficulties. Collectively, the results indicate differences in the patterns of associations between men's emotional functioning and their body dissatisfaction and disordered eating.