Eating tasty foods to cope, enhance reward, socialize or conform: What other psychological characteristics describe each of these motives?

Psychological characteristics associated with eating motives of the Palatable Eating Motives Scale (PEMS) were identified in 192 undergraduates. Coping was characterized by greater BMI, emotion-triggered eating, and eating concern and also by binge-eating and perceived stress reactivity in females. Reward Enhancement was characterized by greater BMI, anxiety- and depression-eating in females and by anger/frustration-eating in males.

Real-time sampling of reasons for hedonic food consumption: further validation of the Palatable Eating Motives Scale.

Highly palatable foods play a salient role in obesity and binge-eating, and if habitually eaten to deal with intrinsic and extrinsic factors unrelated to metabolic need, may compromise adaptive coping and interpersonal skills. This study used event sampling methodology (ESM) to examine whether individuals who report eating palatable foods primarily to cope, to enhance reward, to be social, or to conform, as measured by the Palatable Eating Motives Scale (PEMS), actually eat these foods primarily for the motive(s) they report on the PEMS. Secondly this study examined if the previously reported ability of the PEMS Coping motive to predict BMI would replicate if the real-time (ESM-reported) coping motive was used to predict BMI.

The Kids-Palatable Eating Motives Scale: relation to BMI and binge eating traits.

Introduction: Despite high rates of obesity in adolescents, little is known about their individual motives for eating caloric foods for reasons unrelated to hunger. The goal of this study was to provide a preliminary validation of the "Kids Palatable Eating Motives Scale" (K-PEMS), a self-report survey designed to identify individual motives for eating tasty foods in adolescents. The study also sought to determine if any specific motive(s) can account for variance in BMI and binge-eating disorder (BED) traits which can exacerbate obesity.