Why we eat what we eat: Psychological influences on eating behavior

control resources and motives impact dietary healthiness in women. Appetite, 56, Jonesìittle sister ate more when she feels loved? Differential effects of social inclusion and exclusion on eating behavior. Poster auf der 25. Konferenz der underlying the selection of food in dependence of gender, age, and BMI. Poster auf der 23. Zusammenfassung 2 konfirmatorischen Faktorenanalysen eine gute Modelpassung. Als Motivfaktoren wurden Summary The present dissertation addresses psychological influences on eating behavior. Understanding why people eat what they eat in everyday life, that is, motives for eating behavior, is crucial for the development of interventions to promote normal eating and to prevent eating disorders. Furthermore, enhancing knowledge about both, individual and situational factors facilitating (pull factors) or impeding (push factors) healthy eating is essential for the prevention and treatment of obesity and its accompanying diseases. Accordingly, this dissertation encompassed three different goals. The first goal was to capture a wide range of motives underlying normal eating behavior and to develop on this basis a concise questionnaire, that is, the Eating Motivation Survey (TEMS). The second goal of this dissertation was to investigate the impact of these individual variables on dietary healthiness and the third goal was to examine the conjoint influence on eating behavior of both, individual and situational factors. In a series of studies, in a first step motives were brought together from existing literature, interviews with practical working nutrition experts, and from structured expert discussions with health psychologists of the University of Konstanz. From this composition of 331 motives, we developed a preliminary version of the TEMS. In a second step, 1,250 participants filled in this questionnaire, yielding 13 motive factors in exploratory factor analysis. Based on these results, the preliminary TEMS was refined to 15 motive factors and tested in another sample of 1,040 participants in a third step. Confirmatory factor analyses yielded a satisfactory model fit for a full and a brief survey version. The motive factors were and Social Image, ordered according to the reported frequency of motives to trigger eating behavior. Factorial structure was generally invariant across gender and body mass index (BMI), which indicates a high stability for the Eating Motivation Survey scales. On the mean level, however, significant differences in motives for eating and food choice associated with Summary 6 gender, age, and BMI emerged. Interestingly, factorial correlations suggested that socio-cultural motives such as sociability, social norms, traditions, and social image concerns were …