Eating your emotions: Within-person relations of emotional overeating with lability/negativity and emotion regulation from childhood to young adulthood

Abstract Emotional overeating theories posit that lability/negativity and poor emotion regulation increase emotional overeating risk, yet empirical evidence is limited. This longitudinal study followed 878 Norwegian participants (50.1% girls) biennially from ages 6 to 18, with parent and teacher ratings of lability/negativity and emotion regulation, and parent-reported (ages 6–12) and self-reported (ages 14–18) emotional overeating. Random-intercept cross-lagged panel models showed that increased emotional lability/negativity predicted increased emotional overeating in childhood, whereas emotion regulation did not predict later emotional overeating. Surprisingly, increased emotional overeating predicted improved teacher-reported emotion regulation in adolescence. No significant age differences within childhood or adolescence were found, nor were sex differences. These findings partially support emotional overeating theories, suggesting that early preventive interventions could address emotional lability/negativity in children.