ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health and Nutrition
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1663474
This article is part of the Research TopicSports, Nutrition and Public Health: Analyzing their Interconnected ImpactsView all 25 articles
The latent Profile Structure of Negative Emotion In Female College Students and Its Impact on Eating Behavior: The Mediating Role of Physical Exercise
Provisionally accepted
- Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang, China
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Objective: Negative emotions (NE) are strongly linked to disordered eating among female university students, yet the underlying mechanisms require further clarification. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between NE and eating behavior (EB) within this population, specifically examining the mediating role of physical exercise (PE) and exploring the latent profiles of NE through a personcentered approach.Methods: An online survey was administered to 832 female university students, from which 789 valid responses were analyzed. We utilized the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS), the Sakata Eating Behavior Scale short form (EBS-SF), and a single-item PE measure. The data were analyzed using mediation analysis with bootstrapping and Latent Profile Analysis (LPA).Results: NE was significantly and positively related to problematic EB (β=0.414, P<0.001) and negatively related to PE (β=-0.390, P<0.001), while PE was negatively related to EB (β=-0.086, P<0.05). PE was confirmed as a partial mediator in the NE-EB relationship (indirect effect=0.034). Furthermore, LPA identified three distinct NE profiles: an "Emotionally Stable" group (16.86%), a "Transition Risk" group (51.33%), and an "Anxious-Distress" group (31.81%), with these profiles exhibiting significant differences in both EB (F=65.088) and PE (F=55.241).Female university students can be classified into three distinct emotional profiles ("Emotionally Stable", "Transition Risk", and "Anxious-Distress"), which are significantly associated with different levels of physical exercise and problematic eating behaviors. In addition, NE is not only directly associated with EB but also indirectly linked to it by reducing engagement in PE. This finding indicates that health interventions targeting female college students with high NE should, in addition to emotional management, actively promote the development of PE habits to effectively block the pathway from NE to unhealthy eating behaviors. The conclusions should be considered in light of the study's cross-sectional design and its reliance on a single-item measure for PE.
Keywords: negative emotion, eating behavior, physical exercise, Female college students, moderated mediation model, latent profile analysis
Received: 10 Jul 2025; Accepted: 22 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Huang, Chen and Hu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Chang Hu, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang, China
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