Mindfulness, depression, and emotional eating: The moderating role of nonjudging of inner experience
Section snippets
Participants
Participants were a sample of 248 individuals (55.6% female) ranging from 18.1 to 34.8 years of age (M = 25.5, SD = 3.8, Median = 26.1) who were recruited online through Qualtrics Panels. Inclusion criteria included being 18 years of age or older, and ability to read and write in English. Participants were two thirds (67.7%) White; 23.0% African American; 1.6% American Indian or Alaska Native; 4.8% Asian; and 2.8% Multiracial. Of these, 2.9% reported that their ethnicity was Hispanic or Latino.
Descriptive statistics
Descriptive statistics for all main study variables, including means, standard deviations, and ranges are presented in Table 1. The demographic characteristics of race, and income were not associated with any of the variables of interest (all p values < .05). As a result, these demographic variables were not included in any of the subsequent models.
Depression
First we examined the main effects of, and interactions between, depression symptoms and the five facets of the FFMQ (see Table 2). Results indicate
Discussion
The present study was a replication and extension of a study conducted by Pidgeon et al. (2013) that investigated the moderating role of trait mindfulness in the relationship between psychological distress and emotional eating. In contrast to Pidgeon and colleagues’ use of the MAAS, the current study utilized the FFMQ; a multidimensional measure of trait mindfulness with five distinct factors (observing, describing, acting with awareness, nonjudging, and nonreactivity).
We first hypothesized
Declaration of competing interest
None.
Acknowledgments
This research was funded in part by a Plumeri Award for Faculty Excellence to the second author. The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. Adrian J. Bravo and Dr. Xiaowen Xu for their insightful feedback on the manuscript, and KC David, Samantha Cooper, and Claire Peterson for their help with data collection and entry.
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Author Note. Ti Hsu is now at the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Iowa.