Methods
Participants
The sample was composed of obese female patients who sought
treatment in a day-unit of a general hospital in Lomme, France, a
nutrition unit in Roubaix, France, or a nutrition unit in Arras,
France. Of the 130 people who were asked to join the experiment
by the physician or the psychologist of the unit, 25 refused because
they had difficulty understanding French, were not interested, or
both. Eleven people were excluded from the research due to missing
data. Thus, 94 patients were included in the final sample. After
all participants had been informed of the study objectives, they
signed consent forms to voluntarily participate. The patients were informed that refusing participation would have no effect on the
quality of their medical treatment.
Fifty-six healthy women were recruited at a university and consented
to serve as members of the control group. The control participants
were healthy, normal-weight people recruited at a
university and in the environment of the investigator. A clinical
interview conducted by the psychologist in charge of the study ensured
that patients and controls who suffered from neurological
disorders, comorbid posttraumatic stress disorders, intellectual
deficits, recent histories of drug or alcohol abuse, psychoses or
bipolar disorder were excluded from this study. Table 1 provides
group characteristics.