Parental responsiveness, demandingness, and emotional eating among Chinese college students: the mediating role of interpersonal trust.

Objectives: This cross-sectional, online self-report study examined the associations between parenting styles and emotional eating among Chinese college students, with a specific focus on the mediating role of interpersonal trust. Emotional eating-a maladaptive strategy for coping with negative emotions such as anxiety, stress, and sadness-has been linked to psychological distress and adverse physical health outcomes. Guided by a health psychology perspective, we investigated how two core parenting dimensions, responsiveness and demandingness, relate to emotional eating, both directly and indirectly through interpersonal trust. A key methodological feature is that participants retrospectively recalled parenting experiences before age 16; this should be considered when interpreting the findings. Methods: Data were collected from 464 Chinese college students ( Results: Paternal and maternal parenting styles showed high cross-parent consistency. Parental demandingness (overcontrol) was positively associated with emotional eating both directly ( Conclusion: Parental demandingness is associated with higher emotional eating, both directly and indirectly through reduced interpersonal trust. Parental responsiveness showed no significant direct association with emotional eating. These findings suggest that interventions targeting overcontrolling parenting and promoting interpersonal trust among college students could help mitigate emotional eating. Causal interpretations await longitudinal or experimental evidence.