Recently, the number of people being treated for bulimia nervosa has continued to increase, especially adults in their 20s and 30s. Bulimia can cause a variety of eating disorders, and emotional eating in response to negative emotions is known as a risk factor for bulimia nervosa. Therefore, it aims to explore the negative emotional pathways that adults in their 20s and 30s can experience and prevent emotional eating.
The purpose of this study is to verify the double mediating effect of self-silencing and anger rumination in the impact of perfectionistic self-presentation on emotional eating in adults in their 20s and 30s. To examine the relationship between variables, the Korean version of the Perfectionist Self-Presentation(PSPS-K), Self-Silence Scale (STSS), Korean version of the Angry Reflection (K-ARS), and Emotional Eating Scale (EES) were measured for 431 adults in their 20s and 30s. The final analysis used data from a total of 387 people, excluding 44 who said they were not of age or living abroad. To determine the relationship of each variable, we used SPSS 26.0 and analyzed the double mediating effect using the SPSS Process macro program.
The results of this study are as follows. First, perfectionistic self-presentation, self-silencing, anger rumination, and emotional eating all exhibited significant static correlations. Second, self-silencing completely mediated between perfectionistic self-presentation and emotional eating. Third, anger rumination mediated partially between perfectionistic self-presentation and emotional eating. Finally, self-silentcing and anger rumination represented a complete double mediating between perfectionistic self-presentation and emotional eating.
The results of this study indicate that perfectionistic self-presentation has a significant impact on emotional eating only through self-silencing and anger rumination rather than directly affecting emotional eating. Therefore, it suggests that therapeutic interventions that can aware, express, and regulation emotions can be effective to reduce self-silencing behavior and anger rumination levels.