Sport and Disordered Eating (Adult Population)

This 2020 study investigates whether gender and team interdependence (whether the competition is engaged with one person or as a team) affects psychosocial risk factors for disordered eating. This experiment was conducted among a sample of non-athletes, individual athletes, and team athletes. While gender was found to significantly influence these psychosocial risk factors, team type did not appear to have a main effect. However, there were considerable differences in psychosocial variables between genders. Women were characterized by higher scores than men in drive for thinness, body dissatisfaction, and emotion recognition, whereas men scored relatively higher in emotional dysregulation and binge eating. Benau et al. also combined all the athletes (both individual and team athletes) and compared their statistics with non-athletes. Relative to male athletes and women non-athletes, female athletes showed higher scores in drive for thinness, emotion dysregulation, and binge eating. On the other hand, male athletes demonstrated greater difficulty identifying their feelings and increased body dissatisfaction, compared with female athletes. Risk of eating disorders can be conveyed by emotional processes among men and women, especially in athletes.