Ovarian hormones significantly influence dysregulated eating in females. However, most women do not develop appreciable disordered eating, suggesting that ovarian hormones may not affect all women equally. In the first study of this thesis, I examined whether individual differences in trait negative affect (NA) moderate ovarian hormone-dysregulated eating associations in 446 women who provided saliva samples for hormone measurements and ratings of NA and emotional eating daily for 45 consecutive days. Women were at greatest risk for emotional eating when they had high trait NA and experienced a hormonal milieu characterized by low estradiol or high progesterone. While effects were significant in all women, the combination of high trait NA and high progesterone was particularly risky for women with a history of clinically significant binge eating episodes. These findings provide initial evidence that affective and hormonal risk interact to promote dysregulated eating, and that effects may be amplified in women with clinically significant binge eating.Low emotion differentiation (the tendency to experience vague affective states rather than discrete emotions) is associated with psychopathology marked by emotion regulation deficits and impulsive/maladaptive behavior. However, research examining associations between emotion differentiation and dysregulated eating is still nascent. In the second study, I therefore examined associations between several measures of emotion differentiation and binge eating phenotypes across a spectrum of severity.
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