Looking good. BMI, attractiveness bias and visual attention

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.

[1]  T. F. Cash,et al.  Body image and psychosocial differences among stable average weight, currently overweight, and formerly overweight women: the role of stigmatizing experiences. , 2004, Body image.

[2]  D. Allison,et al.  The effects of self-generated comparison targets, BMI, and social comparison tendencies on body image appraisal , 1997 .

[3]  O. Mimura.  [Eye movements]. , 1992, Nippon Ganka Gakkai zasshi.

[4]  Alexandra F. Corning,et al.  Differential Social Comparison Processes in Women With and Without Eating Disorder Symptoms , 2006 .

[5]  R. E. Gardner,et al.  A visual search examination of attentional biases among individuals with high and low drive for thinness , 2003, Eating and weight disorders : EWD.

[6]  F. Siero,et al.  On models and vases: body dissatisfaction and proneness to social comparison effects. , 2007, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[7]  T. Joiner,et al.  Evidence for attentional bias in women exhibiting bulimotypic symptoms. , 2006, The International journal of eating disorders.

[8]  T. Mussweiler.  Comparison processes in social judgment: mechanisms and consequences. , 2003, Psychological review.

[9]  T. Dalgleish,et al.  The emotional Stroop task and psychopathology. , 1996, Psychological bulletin.

[10]  K. Dobson,et al.  Attentional biases in eating disorders: a meta-analytic review of Stroop performance. , 2004, Clinical psychology review.

[11]  E. Gordon,et al.  In the eye of the beholder: Processing body shape information in anorexic and bulimic patients , 1991 .

[12]  C. Nederkoorn,et al.  Selective visual attention for ugly and beautiful body parts in eating disorders. , 2005, Behaviour research and therapy.

[13]  Eric Stice,et al.  Role of body dissatisfaction in the onset and maintenance of eating pathology: a synthesis of research findings. , 2002, Journal of psychosomatic research.

[14]  M. Makara-Studzińska,et al.  [Obesity and body image]. , 2009, Psychiatria polska.

[15]  K. Mogg,et al.  Biases in eye movements to threatening facial expressions in generalized anxiety disorder and depressive disorder. , 2000, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[16]  L. Festinger.  A Theory of Social Comparison Processes , 1954 .

[17]  T. F. Cash,et al.  The nature and extent of body-image disturbances in anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa: a meta-analysis. , 1997, The International journal of eating disorders.