Objective: Prospective research indicates that poor emotional functioning predicts obesity. The maladaptive coping hypothesis proposes that unhealthy eating is used to regulate emotion, leading to obesity. Given research suggesting that many utilize religion to cope with distress, we hypothesized that positive and negative religious coping would moderate links between emotional functioning and obesity. In addition, previous research focused on Christians and the relevance of religious coping to the Jewish context, where obesity may be of particular concern, was examined.
Method: 212 Jewish participants completed self-report health and emotional functioning measures as well as the Jewish Religious Coping scale.
Results: Moderation analysis indicated that negative coping had no effect, while positive coping was a significant moderator. Specifically, poor emotional functioning predicted increased obesity among those with low, but not high, positive religious coping. This effect remained even after several possible confounding factors were controlled for, and the effect was large.
Conclusions: These findings further support the maladaptive coping hypothesis, indicating that religious coping may provide an alternative strategy to maladaptive eating. They also illustrate a possible mechanism by which religiosity correlates with better health and support the relevance of religious coping to the Jewish context.