A disgust mood state causes a negative interpretation bias, but not in the specific domain of body-related concerns

The present study was designed to examine the effects of a disgust mood state on negative interpretation bias, in particular in the domain of body and weight concerns. Participants (N = 120) were randomly assigned to one of four mood induction groups (i.e., disgust, anxiety, happy, and neutral) and were afterwards asked to respond to various types of ambiguous scenarios to index general threat interpretations, negative body-related interpretations, and neutral/positive interpretations. Results demonstrated that both the anxiety and disgust mood induction groups displayed higher levels of negative interpretations of the ambiguous threat scenarios than the neutral and happy groups. However, no evidence was obtained for a negative interpretation bias in the body-related domain for these negative mood groups, and this conclusion was also true for participants scoring high on a scale of eating disorder symptoms. Altogether, these findings suggest that disgust does not play a role in eating pathology by inducing a negative interpretation bias in the specific domain of body and weight concerns.

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