Emotion dysregulation and eating disorder symptoms in mother-daughter dyads: An actor-partner interdependence modeling approach

Introduction: This study investigates dyadic associations between emotion dysregulation and eating disorder symptoms in mother-daughter dyads. This study employs the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM) to test three hypotheses: (1) emotion dysregulation will associate with an individual's own eating disorder risk beyond the effect of their partner's emotional dysregulation (actor effect); (2) emotion dysregulation will associate with a dyad member's eating disorder risk beyond the effect of their emotion dysregulation (partner effect); (3) dyad members’ emotional dysregulation will interact to associate with stronger eating disorder risk in each dyad member (actor-partner interaction effect). Methods: 104 dyads completed a series of self-report measures, including the Difficulties with Emotion Regulation Scale, Body Dissatisfaction Scale, and Eating Disorder Diagnostic Scale. Eligible dyads were required to consist of an adolescent daughter aged 11-21 years old, as well as their mother, and were required to converse in English and live in the US. Results: Two APIMs were specified, predicting body dissatisfaction and eating disorder symptoms, respectively. Concerning the body dissatisfaction model, actor effects indicated higher emotion dysregulation was associated with higher body dissatisfaction reports for both mothers and daughters. Partner effects indicated one member's higher emotion dysregulation was significantly related to the other member's higher body dissatisfaction. Regarding the eating disorder symptoms model, actor effects showed higher emotion dysregulation was associated with more eating disorder symptoms for both mothers and daughters. For both body dissatisfaction and eating disorder symptoms models, no significant actor-partner interaction effects were found. Discussion: Implications of these findings are discussed.