To begin, this study is part of the research field about anorexia nervosa. The authors wanted to focus on how people with anorexia nervosa evaluate body shapes. The first aim of the study was to examine the role of the ultra-thin ideal and the role of the negative attitude toward overweight in the motivation to adopt pathological restrictive dietary behaviors. The second aim of the study was to look at the link between silhouettes evaluation, eating disorders, and mood disorders.
An experiment was conducted with two groups of participants, a group of 35 anorexia nervosa participants and a group of 35 participants with normal body weight. Implicit and explicit measures of the silhouettes evaluation were used, an implicit measure allows to have access to what happens in the head of a person automatically, not consciously contrary to an explicit measure. Three silhouettes of women were used to operationalize the body shapes. Thus, there was a silhouette ultra-thin, a normal silhouette and an overweight silhouette.
The results of the automatic measures showed that anorexia nervosa participants did not evaluate the ultra-thin silhouettes more positively than the participants in the other group. In contrast, the anorexic patients rated the overweight body shapes more negatively than the other participants, although all the participants rated the overweight silhouettes negatively. Moreover, participants’ levels of anxiety and depression did not influence the positive or negative rating they had on body shapes.
The authors’ interpretation is that a positive assessment of thinness is not a key motivation in dietary restriction behaviors. Nevertheless, considering fatness as negative silhouettes a more important motivation for adopting these behaviors. In fact, the anorexic patients evaluated the overweight silhouette more negatively than the participants who did not have an eating disorder. It is important to underline that in this study, there was no evidence for a positive evaluation of ultra thinness by participants suffering from anorexia nervosa. The results of this experiment do not validate the popular belief that overexposure to thin ideals in society is an important cause of anorexia. In conclusion, the authors are recommending research to be continued on anorexia nervosa because other variables play a more important role in the adoption of pathological eating behaviors.
Cserjési, R., Vermeulen, N., Luminet, O., Marechal, C., Nef, F., Simon, Y., & Lénárd, L. (2010). Explicit vs. implicit body image evaluation in restrictive anorexia nervosa. Psychiatry Research,175(1), 148-153.
