Affiliation:
1. Werklund School of Education University of Calgary Calgary Alberta Canada
2. Department of Psychology University of North Texas Denton Texas USA
3. Adult Eating Disorders Program, School of Medicine Stanford University Stanford California USA
Abstract
AbstractObjectiveLiterature on eating disorder (ED) symptoms of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) group is extremely scarce. This study aimed to understand the mechanisms underlying the associations between insecure attachment and ED symptoms and examine whether these mechanisms differed between White and BIPOC groups.MethodThe study investigated direct and indirect relationship between attachment anxiety/avoidance and ED symptoms via intolerance of uncertainty (IU) and emotion regulation strategies of suppression and reappraisal. Further, we examined whether the proposed mechanisms equally represented White versus BIPOC using Multigroup Structural Equation Model (MG‐SEM). A total of 1227 college students (48.50% BIPOC and 51.50% White) completed research questionnaires.ResultsResults showed that IU and suppression mediated the relations between insecure attachment and ED symptoms for both White and BIPOC groups. Uniquely, reappraisal mediated the relations between insecure attachment and ED symptoms for the White group, but not for the BIPOC group.DiscussionThe implications of the findings for culturally informed practice are discussed, including targeting increasing tolerability of uncertainties and improving emotion regulation to mitigate ED symptoms for those with insecure attachment.