Increased food craving during positive compared to negative emotions with high-calorie specificity during negative emotions only – most pronounced in trait emotional eaters: An online experiment in a convenience sample

Objective: Theories on emotional eating are central to our understanding of the etiology, maintenance, and treatment of eating and weight disorders. Yet, whether emotional eating is a general effect in everyone or rather specific to a subgroup with respective eating styles remains uncertain. Similarly, few studies investigated both positive and negative emotions in the same design. Here, we conducted a well-powered study on the effects of positive and negative induced emotions on food picture specific craving ratings while considering trait emotional eating style.Method: In total 178 participants (135 female; 147 university students) viewed and rated pictures of foods with high and low caloric content during positive, neutral, and negative emotions induced idiosyncratically through recall of emotional episodes. Results: Emotion induction was successful. Across all food images, food craving was highest during positive, followed by neutral and lowest during negative emotional states. Only during negative states were high-calorie foods craved more than low-calorie foods, an effect that was driven by individual with high trait negative emotional overeating and those with high positive emotional undereating.Conclusions: The results support a general effect of positive and negative emotional states on appetitive behaviors (i.e. food craving), but also pointing to a subgroup of vulnerable individuals with high trait levels of negative overeating and positive undereating. Whereas normative theories of appetite need to consider emotions in general, targeted prevention approaches could address those with elevated trait questionnaire scores.