Development and validation of the Thoughts on Eating Scale: a domain-specific measure of belief orientations toward eating

BACKGROUND: Understanding individual differences in eating behavior is a central challenge in psychological research. Because broad traits show only weak-to-moderate links to eating, and most measures focus on behavioral outcomes, belief-level, domain-specific constructs connecting global traits to situation-specific behaviors have not been a primary focus of existing measurement approaches. This study introduces and empirically validates "Thoughts on Eating" (ToE) as a domain-specific belief system positioned between stable personality traits and specific eating behaviors. METHODS: We conducted two sequential studies with Japanese adults. In Phase 1, we collected free-text responses from 100 participants to generate candidate items, then administered the resulting scale to a stratified sample of 552 adults to identify the dimensional structure of ToE through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. In Phase 2, we examined test-retest reliability and concurrent validity using the Expanded Mindful Eating Scale (EMES) and the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ) in a follow-up sample of 434 participants. RESULTS: Exploratory and confirmatory analyses supported seven factors: "Enriching One's Heart," "Encouraging Social Communication," "Realizing Oneself," "Sustaining Oneself," "Respecting Food," "Indifference to Eating," and "Disliking Eating." The latter two represent fundamental evaluative orientations that are not well captured by most existing eating-related measures. The scale demonstrated adequate temporal stability and theoretically coherent associations with established measures. Associations with demographic variables and eating behaviors indicated that ToE is shaped by the intersection of individual characteristics and sociocultural contexts, supporting its characterization as an intermediate-level construct that is more stable than situational attitudes yet more context-sensitive than global traits. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings establish that ToE is a theoretically sound construct that reflects belief orientations that have received limited systematic attention in individual-differences research on eating. This study proposes a multi-level structure as a foundation for integrating personality, social, cultural, and clinical psychology perspectives, which is expected to advance our understanding of individual differences in eating behavior.