Attention to fat- and thin-related words in body-satisfied and body-dissatisfied women before and after thin model priming

Leah N Tobin, Christopher R Sears, Alicia S Zumbusch and Kristin M von Ranson

PLOS ONE, 2018, vol. 13, issue 2, 1-19

Abstract: Understanding the cognitive processes underlying body dissatisfaction provides important information on the development and perpetuation of eating pathology. Previous research suggests that body-dissatisfied women process weight-related information differently than body-satisfied women, but the precise nature of these processing differences is not yet understood. In this study, eye-gaze tracking was used to measure attention to weight-related words in body-dissatisfied (n = 40) and body-satisfied (n = 38) women, before and after exposure to images of thin fashion models. Participants viewed 8-second displays containing fat-related, thin-related, and neutral words while their eye fixations were tracked and recorded. Based on previous research and theory, we predicted that body-dissatisfied women would attend to fat-related words more than body-satisfied women and would attend to thin-related words less. It was also predicted that exposure to thin model images would increase self-rated body dissatisfaction and heighten group differences in attention. The results indicated that body-dissatisfied women attended to both fat- and thin-related words more than body-satisfied women and that exposure to thin models did not increase this effect. Implications for cognitive models of eating disorders are discussed.

Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0192914 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 92914&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0192914

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0192914

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().