Food cues and perceptual distortion of the female body: implications for food avoidance in the early dynamics of anorexia nervosa.
The present studies concerned a perceptual mechanism that could partially explain the anorexic's severe eating restraint despite continuing hunger. If a woman values a thin body, unrealistic perception of food's fattening effects should increase the aversiveness of ingesting food and foster restraint in eating. The first study considered the perceived thinness/fatness of women's bodies without and with food cues present. College women who (1) shared the stress-generating personality characteristics of anorexics (AP); and (2) judged models as fatter after food cues were introduced (enhancers) reported more stress than AP non-enhancers; no effect of enhancement upon stress was observed in controls. This moderator effect was replicated in a second study. Thus, women with the personality characteristics and high stress that put them at-risk for anorexia also displayed the perceptual distortion involved in the proposed mechanism. Self-ratings verified the same perceptual mechanism in the high-stress AP woman's perception of her own body.
Heilbrun
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Psychology Department, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322.
Flodin
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A
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000856:Anorexia Nervosa / Q000523:psychology*; D001824:Body Constitution; D001828:Body Image; D003463:Cues; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005260:Female; D005502:Food; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D010469:Perceptual Distortion; D010556:Personality Tests; D011594:Psychometrics; D012307:Risk Factors