Agentic and communal personality traits: Relations to disordered eating behavior, body shape concern, and depressive symptoms

This study was designed to examine links between agentic and communal personality traits and disordered eating behavior and related problems (i.e., body shape concern and depressive symptoms) in a sample of 298 undergraduates. As predicted, unmitigated agency was positively associated with uncontrolled eating, and unmitigated communion was positively related to emotional eating and fasting for at least 24 h in order to control weight. When controlling for depressive symptomatology, unmitigated communion was no longer associated with emotional eating. Whereas unmitigated agentic and communal characteristics were positively associated with problematic eating patterns, agency was negatively associated with fasting and body shape concern. Findings suggest that further examination of the potential influence of gender-linked personality traits on disordered eating behavior is warranted.