The Psychology of Eating: From Healthy to Disordered Behavior

134 Dieting

cognitions were assessed using rating scales, interviews, and the Stroop task,
which is a cognitive test of selective attention. The results from two studies
indicated that dieters responded to high-calorie foods with an increase in
an active state of mind characterized by cognitions such as “rebellious,”
“challenging,” and “defiant,” and thoughts such as “I don’t care now in a
rebellious way, I’m just going to stuff my face” (Ogden and Wardle, 1991;
Ogden and Greville, 1993). It was argued that rather than simply passively
giving in to an overwhelming desire to eat as suggested by other models,
the overeater may actively decide to overeat as a form of rebellion against
self-imposed food restrictions. This rebellious state of mind has also been
described by obese binge eaters who report bingeing as “a way to unleash
resentment” (Loro and Orleans, 1981). Eating as an active decision may
at times also indicate a rebellion against the deprivation of other substances
such as cigarettes (Ogden, 1994), and against the deprivation of emotional
support ( Bruch, 1974).

Mood modification

Dieters overeat in response to lowered mood, and researchers have argued
that disinhibitory behavior enables the individual to mask their negative
mood with the temporary heightened mood caused by eating. This has been
called the masking hypothesis, and has been tested by empirical studies. For
example, Polivy and Herman (1999a) told female subjects that they had
either passed or failed a cognitive task and then gave them food either ad
libitumor in small controlled amounts. The results in part supported the
masking hypothesis as the dieters who ate ad libitumattributed more of their
distress to their eating behavior than to the task failure. The authors argued
that dieters may overeat as a way of shifting responsibility for their negative
mood from uncontrollable aspects of their lives to their eating behavior.
This mood modification theory of overeating has been further supported
by research indicating that dieters eat more than nondieters when anxious,
regardless of the palatability of the food (Polivy, Herman, and McFarlane,
1994). Overeating is therefore functional for dieters as it masks dysphoria, and
this function is not influenced by the sensory aspects of eating.

The role of denial

Cognitive research illustrates that thought suppression and thought control
can have the paradoxical effect of making the thoughts that the individual