Biased and Inflexible Interpretations of Ambiguous Social Situations: Associations with Eating Disorder Symptoms and Socioemotional Functioning

We used causal discovery analysis to probe relations between eating disorder symptoms, interpretation bias and inflexibility, and socioemotional functioning markers. Results suggest that less accurate (biased, inflexible) interpretations of social information contribute to anxious anticipation of rejection and down-regulation of positive social emotion, which are thought to encourage disordered eating.