Joseph, Christina. The impacts of attentional biases and implicit attitudes on body dissatisfaction. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3125QWB
DescriptionBody dissatisfaction pervades Western society. Men and women alike experience negative feelings about their bodies because their physical appearance is not “ideal” according to societal norms of beauty. Such negative evaluations of one’s body can exacerbate or trigger the development of disturbed body image and disordered eating behavior. According to current social-cultural theories of body dissatisfaction, exposure to Western media is a defining factor in the development of body dissatisfaction. One such theory, the Tripartite Influence Model (TIM) of body image, posits that internalization of societal ideals and social comparisons mediate the effects of the core social influences; namely, family, peer, and media, on body image distortions and body dissatisfaction. Problematic social comparison, a mediator in the TIM, may manifest as a bias in visual attention in which one visually compares one’s own body to the ideal body type that is glamorized in Western media. Further, to the extent that social influences promote the idealization of “thin” or “muscular” body types, individuals should hold positive evaluations (implicit attitudes) of such body types during social comparison. Visual attentional biases additionally might strengthen these existing internalizations of societal ideals, resulting in a vicious self-perpetuating cycle. The five psychophysical studies described here investigated these two potential components that existing models of body dissatisfaction may require; namely, attentional biases and implicit attitudes. Findings across these experiments lend support to the hypothesis that biases in visual attention do meaningfully contribute to the maintenance of body dissatisfaction, though this relationship is more complex than originally conceived. Further, the results of Experiments 3 and 4 preliminarily support meaningful relationships between implicit attitudes towards specific body types and both visual attentional biases and body dissatisfaction. Finally, Experiment 5 measures the direct, causal effects of visual attentional training on body dissatisfaction. Taken together, these experiments introduce an innovative approach to the study of body dissatisfaction and eating disorders providing strong implications for treatment and prevention.