The Peer Context of Dieting: The Relationship between Young Adults' Dieting Frequency and Their Friends' Weight-Related Characteristics

Previous research found that weight-related behaviors and body weight tends to be similar between individuals and peers. Rather little is known how different domains of weight-related behaviors co-evolve in peer networks. Hence, this study explores how young adults' self-reported dieting relates to perceived body weight and weight control behaviors of their peers. A Swedish two-wave panel survey with ego-centric network data was analyzed with negative binomial regression models. Nineteen-year-old men and women in the first wave, and 23-year-olds in the follow-up sample were examined. Men at age 19 showed an increased dieting propensity when being exposed to underweight peers. Compared to men, women's dieting at age 19 was more strongly related to their own body image concerns, and peers' weight-related behaviors like physical exercising and unhealthy eating. The associations between dieting and peers' weight-related characteristics for men and women deteriorated from age 19 to age 23. The findings suggest that women's dieting-in comparison to dieting in men-is more strongly related to the peer context. The decrease in associations between men's and women's dieting and peers' weight-related characteristics from age 19 to age 23 may reflect a weakened importance of the peer context in early adulthood.

"She got more than me". Social comparison and the social context of eating

Eating is a social activity for most people. Other people influence what and how much an individual chooses and eats. Such social influence on eating has long been recognized and studied, but we contend here that one important social influence factor, social comparison, has been largely overlooked by researchers. We review the literature on comparing oneself to others on eating and weight-related dimensions, which appears to have an effect not only on eating per se, but also on self-image, body dissatisfaction, and emotions. Social comparison processes may well underlie many of the social influence findings discussed in this special issue.

The time course of attentional allocation while women high and low in body dissatisfaction view self and model physiques

The purpose of this study was to examine trait levels of dissatisfaction with specific bodily regions and attentional characteristics associated with those regions among women high (HBD, n = 15) and low (LBD, n = 14) in body dissatisfaction. Separate laboratory visits were completed, during, which eye movements were recorded as participants viewed slides of self-physiques or model-physiques. Comparisons of search tendencies were made across the entire 5 s of slide presentation, and then within each of the ten 500 ms epochs that comprised the 5 s viewing period. The HBD group made initial fixations to the pelvis region proportionately more than the LBD group, and avoided looking at their own bodies relative to the LBD group. They also viewed the model's legs significantly longer than the LBD group. When considering the time course of attentional allocation, the HBD group preferentially viewed areas typical of dissatisfaction during the latter viewing periods, regardless of whether they were looking at themselves or the model. Results are discussed in the context of an integrated social cognitive view with regard to the formation of a negative body schema that both results from and then perpetuates the negative affective consequences that characterize individuals who are symptomatic for eating disorders.

The moderating effect of avoidant coping on restrained eaters' risk for disinhibited eating: implications for dietary relapse prevention

Avoidant coping style was tested as a moderating variable for the effect of ego threat on chronic dieters' (restrained eaters) risk for disinhibited eating. Young women (n=146) were randomly assigned to a speech threat or to a no threat condition and then participated in a bogus ice cream taste test. Analyses of covariance revealed that restrained eaters who scored higher on a standardized measure of avoidant coping consumed significantly more ice cream than restrained eaters who scored lower on avoidant coping regardless of the threat condition to which they were assigned. The findings suggest that dieters prone to using avoidant coping strategies may be particularly vulnerable to overeating and, therefore, could be at risk for lapses in dietary restraint. Hence, dietary relapse prevention programs might target dieters who tend to use avoidant coping strategies for cognitive-behavioral therapy to teach them adaptive coping skills.

The Yale Interpersonal Stressor (YIPS): affective, physiological, and behavioral responses to a novel interpersonal rejection paradigm

Given links between interpersonal functioning and health as well as the dearth of truly interpersonal laboratory stressors, we present a live rejection paradigm, the Yale Interpersonal Stressor (YIPS), and examine its effects on mood, eating behavior, blood pressure, and cortisol in two experiments. The YIPS involves one or more interaction(s) between the participant and two same-sex confederates in which the participant is made to feel excluded and isolated. In Experiment 1, 50 female undergraduates were randomly assigned to the YIPS or a control condition. Participants in the YIPS condition experienced greater negative affect and less positive affect than did those in the control condition. Further, restrained eaters ate more following the YIPS than did nonrestrained eaters. In Experiment 2, 25 male and female undergraduates completed the YIPS. The YIPS induced significant increases in tension, systolic blood pressure (SBP), and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) from baseline, while significantly decreasing positive affect. The YIPS appeared particularly relevant for women, resulting in significantly greater increases in cortisol and SBP for women compared to men. The YIPS, then, provides an alternative to traditional, achievement-oriented laboratory stressors and may allow for the identification of individuals most vulnerable to interpersonal stress.

Guilty pleasures and grim necessities: affective attitudes in dilemmas of self-control

Do self-control situations pit controlled reason against impulsive emotion, or do some emotions support the controlled choice? A pilot study of self-control attitudes found ambivalence between hedonic affect associated with short-term perspectives and self-conscious affect associated with the long term. In Study 1, negative self-conscious affect accompanied higher self-control among delayed-cost dilemmas ("guilty pleasures") but not delayed-benefit dilemmas ("grim necessities"). Study 2 showed that hedonic affect was more accessible than was self-conscious affect, but this difference was less among high self-control dilemmas. In Study 3, unobtrusively primed self-conscious emotion words caused dieters to eat less if the emotions were negative, more if positive. Hedonic positive and negative emotion words had the opposite effect. Self-conscious emotional associations, then, can support self-control if brought to mind before the chance to act.

Dietary restraint, attributional styles for eating, and preloading effects

A total of 319 undergraduates completed the Restraint Scale and an Eating Attributional Style Questionnaire (EASQ). Subsequently, 101 female students participated in the classic preloading experiment. The results indicated that restrained eating was associated with an external locus of control attribution style, particularly for indulgent food consumption (ELCifc). Partial preloading effects for Restraint were found: The amount consumed increased as a function of Restraint in the preload condition. A more complete pattern of preloading was found for the ELCifc attribution style. In addition, the relationship between Restraint and food consumed in the preload condition was no longer significant with the ELCifc attribution style partialled out. The findings supported the hypotheses that: (a) restrained eaters display an external attribution style of learned helplessness and (b) related cognitions serve as a cause of preloading effects.

Impact of interpersonal and ego-related stress on restrained eaters

OBJECTIVE

This study examined the impact of different types of stress, one interpersonal and two ego-related versus a control condition, on the eating behavior of individuals with varying degrees of dietary restraint.

METHOD

Eighty-two females were randomly assigned to one of three manipulations or a control group, and then all groups completed an ice cream taste test.

RESULTS

A significant interaction revealed that for participants with higher restraint, those in the stressful manipulations ate significantly more than participants in the control group. Further, the pattern of consumption based on restraint for the interpersonal group differed from the other three conditions. In the interpersonal group, the greater the restraint, the more participants ate, whereas in the other three conditions, the pattern was reversed although not significantly so.

DISCUSSION

Findings are discussed in terms of the role that interpersonal stress plays in the eating behavior of dieters and potential implications regarding the development of eating disorders.

Body dissatisfaction as a mediator of the relationship between dietary restraint and bulimic eating patterns

The present study was designed to test whether dietary restraint mediates the relationship between body dissatisfaction and bulimic eating patterns in a sample of 172 university females. Contrary to what was expected the results showed that body dissatisfaction mediated the relationship between dietary restraint and bulimic patterns of eating. Thus the results highlight the primary importance of body dissatisfaction as a predictor of bulimic behavior. Body dissatisfaction encompasses a broad array of dimensions such as self-perceptions, cognitions, affect and behavior and it carries enormous explanatory power but its different components remain largely unexplored.