Associations of self-repression with disordered eating and symptoms of other psychopathologies for men and women

BACKGROUND: Disordered eating has been found to be associated with constructs involving self-repression, such as selflessness (the tendency to relinquish one’s needs for others’), and concern for appropriateness (an alertness to information about social comparison and tendency to vary one’s behavior in different social situations). This study aimed to examine associations between these self-repression variables and symptoms of general psychopathology for women and men in a community sample. METHODS: Two hundred and thirty-six participants (92 men) aged 18–76 (M = 29.11 ± 10.10) volunteered to complete online measures of disordered eating, concern for appropriateness (cross-situational variability and attention to social comparison information), selflessness, and symptoms of depression, anxiety and somatization. Structural equation models were built to assess pathways between the study variables for men and women separately. RESULTS: A MANOVA 2*7 design showed that women scored significantly higher than men on measures of selflessness, disordered eating and depression. For men, selflessness scores were positively and significantly associated only with depression scores. Cross-situational variability scores were positively associated with depression, somatization and anxiety scores. For women, selflessness scores were positively and significantly associated with depression, disordered eating, somatization and anxiety scores. Cross-situational variability scores were positively and significantly associated with depression, anxiety and somatization scores but not with disordered eating scores. Attention to Social Comparison Information scores were positively and significantly associated only with disordered eating scores. CONCLUSIONS: Self-repression is more closely linked to psychopathology in women than in men. For men, self-suppression seems to be associated with symptoms of internalizing disorders, but not disordered eating. Even for women, it appears that self-repression is not connected exclusively with disordered eating, but with symptoms of psychopathology in general. Future research should explore why self-suppression plays such a central role in women’s psychopathology.