(PS7-36) Examining the Associations Between Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Emotion Regulation Strategies and Disordered Eating

Emotion regulation difficulties are associated with between 40 - 75% of psychiatric conditions. Indeed, meta-analytic findings suggest emotion regulation strategies such as ruminative brooding and expressive suppression are robustly associated with eating disorders. Thus, emotion regulation is a salient treatment target in numerous models for eating disorders. While emotion regulation difficulties are undeniably related to eating disorders, most research to this point have examined intrapersonal emotion regulation, or how an individual deploys emotion regulation strategies solitarily. However, few studies have examined the association between interpersonal emotion regulation and disordered eating. Interpersonal emotion regulation is an iterative and dyadic process by which one modulates their own or others’ emotions through interpersonal interactions. Thus, interpersonal emotion regulation may be associated with disordered eating. Given the dearth of literature pertaining to interpersonal emotion regulation and disordered eating, we examined the relationship between inter- and intrapersonal emotion regulation strategies among participants with disordered eating. Participants were 181 college students recruited from a large public university (55.2% women; M_age = 20.01, SD = 2.18; White 66.9%, Black 6.6%, Asian15.5%, Hispanic/Latine 3.9%, Multiracial 5.0%, Other 2.2%). Participants completed an eating disorder screening tool and a self-report measure of inter- and intrapersonal emotion regulation strategies (e.g., acceptance, avoidance, reassurance-seeking, and venting). A series of hierarchical linear regression models examined the additive and multiplicative effects of intra- and interpersonal emotion regulation strategies on disordered eating. Results indicated a significant positive main effect for reassurance-seeking (B = 1.94, p = .007) but not for acceptance, avoidance, or venting. There was also a significant interaction effect between acceptance and reassurance-seeking (B = -1.27, p = .015), such that at low levels of acceptance there was a significant positive association between reassurance-seeking and disordered eating. However, at high levels of acceptance, there was no significant association between reassurance-seeking and disordered eating. Results may suggest that individuals experiencing disordered eating may benefit from treatments that promote the acceptance of challenging emotions as these strategies potentially attenuate the effects of reassurance-seeking. Additional studies are needed to determine the longitudinal associations between intra- and interpersonal emotion regulation repertoires on disordered eating.