title: Implicit and explicit affect toward food and weight stimuli in anorexia nervosa.
abstract: We know strikingly little about the core affective processes that drive the development and maintenance of, and recovery from anorexia nervosa (AN). To partially address this knowledge gap, we measured implicit and explicit affect toward pleasant, neutral, unpleasant, food-relevant, and weight-relevant images in three groups: in patients with acute AN, individuals recovered from AN, and healthy controls with no history of AN. Compared with the other two groups, acutely ill AN participants displayed significantly greater implicit positive affect toward pleasant images and significantly greater implicit negative affect toward unpleasant, high-calorie food, and overweight body type images. Recovered participants did not differ significantly from controls on any implicit affect measure. Explicit affective patterns were similar to implicit, but explicit measures yielded much smaller effect sizes and failed to detect certain group differences. Overall, negative implicit affect toward high-calorie foods and overweight body types may represent core affective processes that are operative during acute AN.
authors.affiliation: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, UNC Center for Excellence for Eating Disorders, Neurosciences Hospital, 101 Manning Drive, CB #7160, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, United States. Electronic address: victoria-spring@uiowa.edu.
authors.forename: Victoria L
authors.initials: VL
authors.lastname: Spring
authors.affiliation: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, UNC Center for Excellence for Eating Disorders, Neurosciences Hospital, 101 Manning Drive, CB #7160, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, United States. Electronic address: cynthia_bulik@med.unc.edu.
authors.forename: Cynthia M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Bulik
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D000856:Anorexia Nervosa / Q000523:psychology*; D001828:Body Image / Q000523:psychology; D001835:Body Weight; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002149:Energy Intake; D005260:Female; D005502:Food; D006801:Humans; D050177:Overweight / Q000523:psychology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Anorexia nervosa; Eating disorders; Fat phobia; Implicit affect; Recovery; Thin ideal