AbstractRecent research and theory have started to highlight how eating disorder symptoms are often used to regulate painful emotions. However, there has not been one study that has looked at the contributory effect of all the basic emotions onto disordered eating patterns. This study was designed to address this gap within the literature with a detailed examination of the five basic emotions (anger, sadness, disgust, fear and happiness) in relation to disordered eating patterns. This study used the Basic Emotions Scale and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale to explore levels of emotions within 53 female participants with disordered eating patterns who were recruited from the B‐EAT research database. The results showed strong correlations between disordered eating and the four negative emotions, but only anger and sadness were left as significant contributors to disordered eating within the regression analysis. These findings were discussed in relation to the literature, with particular reference being made to the new Schematic Propositional Analogical Associative Representation System for Eating Disorders (SPAARS‐ED) model. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Key Practitioner Message: Anger and disgust appear to be pivotal emotions in eating disorders.