Is Orthorexia a Security Motivated Eating Behaviour? an Examination Through Cognitive Bias and Cardiac Reactivity to Food
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Lakehead University Knowledge Commons,http://knowledgecommons.lakeheadu.ca Electronic Theses and Dissertations Electronic Theses and Dissertations from 2009 2017 Is orthorexia a security motivated eating behaviour? An examination through cognitive bias and cardiac reactivity to food Mascioli, Brittany A. https://knowledgecommons.lakeheadu.ca/handle/2453/4129 Downloaded from Lakehead University, KnowledgeCommons Is Orthorexia a Security Motivated Eating Behaviour? An Examination through Cognitive Bias and Cardiac Reactivity to Food By Brittany A. Mascioli A thesis submitted to the Department of Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology Department of Psychology Lakehead University Thunder Bay, Ontario July 25, 2017 Abstract Orthorexia is a rigid style of eating that aims to prevent illness that is characterized by a preference for natural foods was investigated as a biologically driven trait with evolutionary roots in a precautionary system of threat avoidance. Research has shown that a precautionary state of this nature is responsive to subtle indicators of potential threat and is detectable through cardiac monitoring. Cardiac monitoring was used to infer activation of this precautionary system in response to experimentally manipulated, food-related threat. In addition to this physiological investigation of orthorexia, cognitive and behavioural aspects were also evaluated. One hundred university students were exposed to natural and nonnatural food stimuli before ranking the stimuli in order of preference. They participated in a taste test in which food preferences were of interest. They completed an implicit association test assessing the relative attitudes toward natural and nonnatural food. Finally, they completed a simulated grocery shopping task assessing food preferences and behavioural intentions. A notable result was the predictive ability of orthorexia concerning the total volume of food consumed during the taste test. Conclusions were unable to be drawn with respect to precautionary system activation due to the failure of the threat manipulation. Performance on a novel task of orthorexia-related behavioural intention was significantly predicted by orthorexic tendency. It was also demonstrated that this relationship is contingent upon a third variable, BMI. Further, it was demonstrated that the predictive relationship between orthorexic tendency and performance on this behavioural task is moderated by food preference, operationally defined in terms of both (a) the rank-ordering of the food stimuli; and (b) the relative volume of natural and nonnatural food consumed during the taste test. The obtained results can be understood in the context of the theory of planned behaviour. ii Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..1 Orthorexia…………………………………………………………………………………2 Prevalence………………………………………………………………………....4 Classification………………………………………………………………………7 Healthy Eating in the General Population……………………………………….10 Measurement...…………………………………………………………………...13 Relevance……...…………………………………………………………………17 Security Motivation……………………………………………………………………...19 Relevance………………………………………………………………………...27 Vagal Tone…….……………………………….………………………………………...27 Vagal Tone and Security Motivation………...……………………………..……30 Relevance………………………………………………………………………...31 Cognitive Bias…………………………………………………………………………....31 Attentional Bias………………………………………………………………….32 Implicit Cognition…………..……………………………………………………32 Relevance………………………………………………………………………...33 The Present Study………………………………………………………………………..35 Method…………………………………………………………………………………………...39 Participants………………………………………………………………………….……39 Materials…………………………………………………………………………………40 Demographic Questionnaire……………………………………………………..40 Eating Attitudes Test……………………………………………………….…….40 Body Image States Scale…………………………………………………….…...41 Short Health Anxiety Inventory………………………………………………….42 ORTO-15……………………………………………………………...................43 Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding…………………………………...43 Taste Test Stimuli………………………………………………….…………….44 Procedure………………………………………………………………………………...45 Food Preference Task and Taste Test..…………………………………………..45 Implicit Association Test………………………………………………………...47 Shopping Task…………………………………………………………………...50 Recording of the Electrocardiogram ……………………………………….........50 Results …………………………………………………………………………………………...51 HRV Variables…………………………………………………………………….……..52 Composite scores…………………………………………...……………………53 Data Analytic Approach……………………………………….………………………...53 Parametric Assumptions…………………………………………………………………54 Data Preparation……………………………………………………………………….…55 ECG recordings…………………………………………………………………..56 Psychometric variables……………………………………………......................56 iii Food exposure task variables…………………………………………………….58 HRV variables…………………………………………….……………………...60 Threat Manipulation……………………………………………………………………...60 Test of Hypotheses……………………………………………………………………….61 Hypothesis 1……………………………………………………………………...61 Hypothesis 2……………………………………………………………………...63 Hypothesis 3……………………………………………………………………...64 Hypothesis 4……………………………………………………………………...66 Summary…………………………………………………………...…………….66 Exploratory Analyses…………………………………………………………………….67 Summary of exploratory analyses………………………………………………..69 Discussion………………………………………………………………………………………..70 Threat Manipulation……………………………………………………………………...70 Behavioural Intention and Realization…………………………………………………...73 Ajzen’s theory of planned behaviour…………………………………………….74 Hypotheses and Exploratory Analyses…………………………………………………..76 Hypothesis 1……………………………………………………………………...76 Hypothesis 2……………………………………………………………………...79 Hypothesis 3……………………………………………………………………...79 Hypothesis 4……………………………………………………………………...83 Exploratory analyses……………………………………………………………..84 Clinical Implications……………………………………………………………………..87 Limitations and Future Directions……………………………………………………….90 Conclusions………………………………………………………………………………91 References ……………………………………………………………………………………….93 Appendices …………………………………………………………………………………..…134 iv List of Tables Table 1. The HRV Recording Blocks, Task Names, and Descriptive Information.……………108 Table 2. Descriptive Statistics and Reliability Coefficients for Psychometric Variables………109 Table 3. Intercorrelations Among Psychometric Variables…………………………………….110 Table 4. Descriptive Statistics for Food Exposure Task Variables………………………….....111 Table 5. Intercorrelations Among Food Exposure Task Variables…………………………......112 Table 6. Descriptive Statistics of Original and Log Transformed RMSSD, HF, and SD1 by Recording Block……………………………………………………………………......113 Table 7. Descriptive Statistics of Baseline and Exposure Composite Scores of Original and Log Transformed RMSSD, HF and SD1……………………………………………………114 Table 8. Descriptive Statistics and Reliability Coefficients for Affective Psychometric Variables……………………………………………………………………………......115 Table 9. Unstandardized Regression Coefficients (SE) for Hypothesis 1 Predicting Food Preference According to Sample Ranking and Consumption and Total Food Consumed…………………………………………………………………………......116 Table 10. Unstandardized Moderated Regression Coefficients (SE) for Moderated Regression Investigating Hypothesis 2, where HRV Recording Block 3 is Criterion Variable and Block 1 is Covariate ….……………………………………………………………….117 Table 11. Unstandardized Moderated Regression Coefficients (SE) for Moderated Regression Investigating Hypothesis 2, where HRV Recording Block 4 is Criterion Variable and Block 2 is Covariate…………………………………………………….…………………..118 Table 12. Unstandardized Moderated Regression Coefficients (SE) for Moderated Regression Investigating Hypothesis 2, where HRV Exposure Composite Score is Criterion Variable v and Baseline Composite score is Covariate….………………………………………...118 Table 13. Unstandardized Regression Coefficients (SE) for Hypothesis 3 Predicting Cognitive Bias According to Natural and Caloric Value of Foods………………………………..120 Table 14. Unstandardized Regression Coefficients (SE) for Hypothesis 4 Predicting Food Preference According to Shopping Task Score……………………………….………..121 Table 15. Unstandardized Regression Coefficients (SE) for Exploratory Regression Analysis Investigating Moderation of Orthorexia by BMI in the Prediction of Shopping Task Performance……………………………………………………………………………122 vi List of Figures Figure 1. Hypothetical model of the moderating effect of experimentally induced threat level on the relationship between trait orthorexia and security motivation……………………...124 Figure 2. Timeline of experimental procedure for laboratory visit ……………………………125 Figure 3. Conceptual diagram of PROCESS Model 1 (Hayes, 2013)………………………….126 Figure 4. Shopping task score plotted as a function of Polish 9-item version of ORTO-15 Test (reciprocal; ORTO-P9r) by natural log transformed-body mass index (BMI(ln)) controlling for gender, EAT-26(ln), SHAI(ln), and BISS. …………………………….127 Figure 5. Shopping task score plotted as a function of Polish 9-item version of ORTO-15 Test (reciprocal; ORTO-P9r) by sample ranking controlling for gender, EAT-26(ln), SHAI(ln), and BISS. …………………………………………………………..……….128 Figure 6. Shopping task score plotted as a function of Polish 9-item version of ORTO-15 Test (reciprocal; ORTO-P9r) by sample consumption controlling for gender, EAT-26(ln), SHAI(ln), and BISS. …………………………………………………………………...129 Figure 7. Conceptual diagram of theory of reasoned action (Madden, Ellen, & Ajzec, 1992)……………………………………………………………………………………130 Figure 8. Conceptual diagram of theory of reasoned action applied to the present study...........131 Figure 9. Conceptual