Cognitive and behavioral correlates of BMI among male and female undergraduate students

We examine three sets of possible correlates of current body mass index (BMI): a set of measures based on cognitive biases for food-related information, the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ) indices, and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS) indices. Contrary to expectations from related literature, none of the cognitive measures correlated with BMI in the whole sample or separately for males and females. For females there was a negative correlation between BMI and external eating and for males a positive correlation between BMI and both external eating and emotional eating, a finding which broadly replicates recent research with Dutch participants. Overall, cognitive paradigms have been employed very fruitfully in areas such as excessive drinking. Our results suggest caution in extending this research to eating behavior.