Presenting the structural model of emotional eating according to the prediction of trait-state anxiety with the mediating role of emotional processing in obese people

Obesity is one of the main causes of non-communicable diseases, which has a growing trend. The present study was conducted with the aim of providing a structural model of emotional eating with regard to the prediction of trait-state anxiety with the mediating role of emotional processing in obese people. The research method is correlation using structural equation modeling. The statistical population of this research was made up of all the obese people in Tehran in 2017, and among them, 378 people were selected using a staged sampling method. The research tools were: Dutch emotional eating (1986), Spielberger's state-trait anxiety (1970) and Bakker et al.'s (2010) emotional processing questionnaire, all of which had acceptable validity and reliability. In order to analyze the data, SPSS-V23 and Lisrel-V8.8 software were used. The findings showed that there is a negative relationship between trait-state anxiety and emotional eating. There is a negative relationship between trait-state anxiety and emotional processing, and there is a negative relationship between emotional eating and emotional processing. Therefore, it can be concluded from the results that trait-state anxiety has an effect on emotional eating with the mediating role of emotional processing in obese people. Therefore, paying attention to the mentioned variables helps researchers and therapists in prevention and designing more suitable treatments.