title: Looking good. BMI, attractiveness bias and visual attention.
abstract: The aim of this study was to study attentional bias when viewing one's own and a control body, and to relate this bias to body-weight and attractiveness ratings. Participants were 51 normal-weight female students with an unrestrained eating style. They were successively shown pictures of their own and a control body for 30s each, while their eye movements (overt attention) were being measured. Afterwards, participants were asked to identify the most attractive and most unattractive body part of both their own and a control body. The results show that with increasing BMI and where an individual has given a relatively low rating of attractiveness to their own body, participants attended relatively more to their self-identified most unattractive body part and the control body's most attractive body part. This increasingly negative bias in visual attention for bodies may maintain and/or exacerbate body dissatisfaction.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Clinical Psychological Science, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands. a.roefs@psychology.unimaas.nl
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Roefs
authors.forename: Anita
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Jansen
authors.forename: Sofie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Moresi
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Willems
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: van Grootel
authors.forename: Anouk
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: van der Borgh
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D001504:Beauty; D001828:Body Image; D015992:Body Mass Index; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis; D012649:Self Concept; D013997:Time Factors; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult