Emotional processing bias in patients with type II and III (morbid) obesity

Morbid obesity is a serious chronic disease, associated with psychological disorders. The objective of the current study is to investigate emotional processing biases in two groups: women with obesity and normal weight women, by means of an implicit memory word completion task. The task consisted of completing emotional and neutral words, half of them being new and the other half having been presented in a previous phase. Psychological state was assessed using the I.S.R.A., S.T.A.X.I.-2, and C.T.D. questionnaires, to measure levels of anxiety, anger and depression, respectively. Patients showed higher levels of stress, anxiety and depression than control women. No significant differences were found in the case of anger scores. In the experimental task, morbid obesity women showed better implicit memory with emotional content words than normal weight women. However, patients showed less implicit memory for neutral words than did the control group. These data reveal a non-voluntary memory bias to negative emotional information, showing, additionally, how an excessive food intake is related to affective and cognitive statuses.