Eating-related thought suppression in high and low disinhibitors.

OBJECTIVE: This study examined the effects of the attempts by high and low disinhibitors to suppress thoughts about food and eating. METHOD: Seventy-seven females who differed in level of disinhibition were asked to monitor their thoughts about food and eating for three 5-min periods. Participants were administered either a suppression or a nonsuppression instruction relating to thoughts about food and eating. The number of food-related thoughts were recorded. Self-report ratings of anxiety, distress, perceived frequency of thoughts, control over thoughts, and strategies used to control thoughts were also obtained. RESULTS: Low disinhibitors who were instructed to suppress had more food-related thoughts than high disinhibitors who were instructed to suppress. The reverse was true in the nonsuppression condition. High disinhibitors reported higher levels of anxiety and distress. Furthermore, high disinhibitors had less difficulty controlling their thoughts than low disinhibitors when asked to suppress, whereas the reverse was true when they did not receive suppression instructions. Thought control strategies were found to correlate significantly with anxiety ratings, self-reported frequency of intrusions, actual number of thought intrusions, and distress. DISCUSSION: High disinhibitors are able to successfully suppress their thoughts about food and eating, at least across relatively short periods of time. However, there appears to be associated negative consequences.

Exposure to westernization and dieting: a cross-cultural study.

OBJECTIVES: The study aimed to establish whether an index of exposure to westernization would predict dieting behavior over and above the predictors of body mass index (BMI) and social influences. The study also sought to compare dieting behaviors among adolescents from three different cultural backgrounds. METHOD: A total of 100 females from Beijing, China, 60 females of Chinese heritage living in Sydney, Australia, and 100 female Australians of no Chinese background were assessed. The exposure to westernization index incorporated the country of birth, the predominant language spoken at home, the country of birth of one's parents, and the country of residence. RESULTS: Exposure to westernization was found to be a significant predictor of dieting status. The westernization index remained an important predictor when BMI and social influences to diet were taken into account. Interestingly, the Chinese Australian girls dieted the least, although the Chinese girls living in China perceived more influence from their peers to diet, despite their lower BMI. CONCLUSION: The exposure to westernization index provides a useful assessment of important influences on dieting in adolescent females.

The role of interpersonal stress in overeating among high and low disinhibitors.

This study was concerned with the role of interpersonal stress in precipitating eating for high and low disinhibitors. Two forms of stress, ostracism and argument, were compared. A second comparison focused on targets and sources of both forms of interpersonal stress. Fifty-seven females who differed in their level of disinhibition participated in a two-stage experiment. In the first stage, they were engaged in a social interaction with two other people. The second stage involved a taste test; the dependent variable was the amount of food eaten. There were no differences between the ostracism and argument conditions for the amount of food eaten; nor did high and low disinhibitors differ. There was, however, a significant interaction between level of disinhibition and role (target vs. source) for the amount of food eaten. High disinhibitors ate markedly more than low disinhibitors when they were targets; the two groups ate similar amounts when they were sources. Strategies that dieters can employ in order to overcome the tendency to overeat are outlined.

Pathways to serious dieting: significant insights from discontinuity.

OBJECTIVES: This paper outlines a strategy for systematically examining the discontinuity in pathways to serious dieting. METHOD: Eight hundred and twenty-three adolescent females were recruited from six high schools in metropolitan Sydney, Australia. They completed a battery of measures that assessed perceived social influences to diet, predisposition to conformity, protective skills, aspects of positive familial context, and dieting-related attitudes and status. Testing took place over two occasions approximately 10 months apart. RESULTS: Family context, protective skills, and a predisposition to conformity were found to differentiate the vulnerable girls who reported high levels of social influence from those who did not. However, those variables did not differentiate those with high social influence who seriously diet from nondieters. Body mass index, drive for thinness, and body dissatisfaction differentiated all of the comparison groups tested. Age did not consistently differentiate these groups. DISCUSSION: The findings can tell us what seems to protect girls who appear susceptible to social influences from becoming serious dieters.

Initiation of dieting among adolescent females.

OBJECTIVE: This brief report identifies the factors that distinguish girls who have begun dieting recently from those who have never dieted, using Huon and Strong's (International Journal of Eating Disorders 23:361-369, 1998) model of dieting. METHOD: Sixty-two initiating dieters were carefully matched with 62 never dieters, according to school, grade, age, language spoken at home, and country of birth. Both groups completed a battery of questionnaires that assessed their dieting status, perceived social influence to diet, conformity disposition, assertiveness, and familial context. RESULTS: A discriminant function analysis showed that initiating dieters and never dieters could be distinguished most clearly by their levels of peer and parental influence. Initiating dieters conformed and complied more to their parents. They were also more competitive with their peers than were the girls who had never dieted. Perceived supportiveness of fathers was also found to set apart those girls who had never dieted. DISCUSSION: Girls who are just beginning to diet differ from those who have never dieted, predominantly in terms of their perceived social influence. The forms of parental influence that distinguish the two groups differ in nature from the type of influence exerted by peers.

Investigating the role of alienation in a multicomponent model of juvenile delinquency.

Research findings indicate that there are multiple causal pathways to delinquency. A multicomponent model of delinquency was developed to explore systematically the interrelationships of psychosocial variables and their relationships to delinquent behaviour. Most importantly, alienation was tested for its ability to act as a core mediating predictor variable. One hundred and fifty-two adolescents, 78 females and 74 males, completed a battery of questionnaires designed to assess each of the variables in the proposed model. Several salient pathways to delinquency were identified. They include environmental and person-centred factors. Alienation, when operationalized as a general construct, was not found to be a necessary mediating predictor variable. "Societal" alienation, on the other hand, was shown to have important explanatory power. Re-examining the model within a large-scale, time-extended study could inform programmes for the prevention and early intervention of delinquent behaviour.

An evaluation of a structural model for studies of the initiation of dieting among adolescent girls.

A model proposed to elucidate the sociopsychological processes involved in the initiation of dieting behavior among female adolescents was evaluated in the present study. The model incorporates social influence (as modeling, conformity, and compliance), autonomous functioning (as conformity disposition, individuation, self-reliance, and locus of control), skill-related functioning (as interpersonal negotiation skills and social self-efficacy), and parental style (in care and overprotection). It was investigated using path analytic procedures. One hundred forty-eight female high school students, aged between 13 and 16 years, completed a battery of questionnaires and were also interviewed individually. The results emphasized that adolescent dieting needs to be understood as a complex multicausal phenomenon. Adolescents' perceptions of direct pressure from their parents to diet was found to be a significant predictor of dieting, and perceived parental encouragement of autonomy, and self-confidence were associated with less dieting behavior. Moreover, whereas body mass index (BMI) and body dissatisfaction significantly predicted dieting, the three sociopsychological variables remained significant predictors of dieting when taking BMI into account, and perceived parent influence to diet remained a significant predictor when taking body dissatisfaction into account. The effect of autonomous functioning on dieting was mediated by body dissatisfaction. The findings suggest a reformulated model for use in large-scale longitudinal investigations.

The initiation and the maintenance of dieting: structural models for large-scale longitudinal investigations.

OBJECTIVE: Female adolescents who engage in weight loss dieting often experience negative physical and psychological consequences. To reduce the occurrence of dieting, we need information about the factors associated with its initiation and maintenance. This paper outlines two separate structural models developed specifically for that purpose. METHOD: The theoretical rationale that informed the development of each of the models was derived from careful reviews of the literature on disordered eating, and from relevant psychological theoretical and empirical literature. RESULTS: Separate theoretical models are identified for the initiation of dieting, in which the core component is social influence, and for the maintenance of dieting, which assumes that differences in the persistence of dieting are best understood as motivational. Each model also incorporates individual differences and variables that are hypothesized to mediate the specific effects on dieting or to operate as moderators of the relationship. DISCUSSION: The operationalization of the components of the models and their application within large-scale longitudinal studies are discussed in relation to the need for systematic investigations of the way dieting begins and how it escalates or is maintained.

Reflections on prevention in dieting-induced disorders.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this article is to reflect on current approaches to the prevention of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. METHOD: The literature on preventing those disorders was examined within the context of the published literatures concerned with preventive interventions for adolescent drug-taking and alcohol-related behaviors. RESULTS: Our review revealed that those involved in preventing eating disorders maintain the traditional distinction between primary and secondary prevention, although the fruitfulness of that categorization is now uncertain. DISCUSSION: It is argued that interventions for dieting-induced disorders ought to be generic, and target the gamut of transitional risk behaviors among adolescents. Programs for dieting, cigarette smoking, alcohol use, and safe sex within the health and social development curricula in schools must be sustained by comprehensive efforts within the broader context of societal and systemic change.

Restrained and unrestrained females' positive and negative associations with specific foods and body parts.

OBJECTIVE: This study was concerned with the positive and negative affective associations of categories of "forbidden" and "allowed" foods, and "threatening" and "nonthreatening" body parts, among dieters and nondieters. METHOD: Forty-one females, categorized according to their cognitive restraint scores, completed a rating task that involved indicating the extent to which each food and body part was associated with three positive and three negative emotions or experiences, as well as with health and illness. RESULTS: Judgements of forbidden foods were more positive. There was also a significant restraint group by food type interaction for negative judgements of forbidden foods. A significant interaction was also produced for subjects' negative ratings of body parts; subjects high in restraint were more likely to rate threatening parts higher on guilt and on anxiety. Forbidden foods were rated lower on health and higher on illness, and high restraint subjects rated both food types more healthy compared with subjects low in restraint. DISCUSSION: Taken together, the results emphasize the subtlety in the affective associations with foods and body parts, which depend on their categorization or specific meanings. Fewer differences emerged when we compared subjects from the high and low restraint groups. Emotionality could underly the "attentional biases" reported in studies using the modified Stroop.

Reports of dieting among children: effects of interview style and approach to information collection.

Recent reports have suggested that worrying about getting fat, and restrictive eating practices have been identified among pre-pubescent girls. This study sought to examine the extent to which interviewing styles and question or response types would differentially affect such reports about dieting among 40 third- and 40 sixth-grade girls. When these girls were asked if they had dieted, or if they intended to go on a diet in the future, the information-eliciting strategies interacted in different ways for the younger and older girls. As an external validation of their body-related attitudes, a second aim was to replicate Huon, Morris & Brown's (1990) body size preference study with children. Few girls identified the very thin body as their 'ideal', and their choices were not consistent with the claim that they might be dissatisfied with their body.

Task dependence in color-naming latency among dieters.

OBJECTIVE: This study was concerned with the robustness of responses to food- and to body-related words within a modified Stroop procedure. METHOD: A within-subjects repeated measures design with 30 female dieters was used in order to examine task dependence in slowed color naming, with comparisons involving different dependent measures and the subjects' responses to the same stimuli using a simple computerized task. RESULTS: The color naming of food words was retarded when compared to neutral words, and more food words than neutral words were seen to appear first in the simple computerized decision task using the same lists of words. In contrast, the time taken to color name body and neutral words did not differ. DISCUSSION: Taken together, these results emphasize that these effects are not confined to patients with an eating disorder, and may simply reflect current community concern with healthy eating (and dieting). It is premature to advocate the Stroop procedure as an index of psychopathology, since it requires some evidence for the specificity of responses among patients with an eating disorder, and more importantly, a consensus about what might be involved in producing such effects.

Towards the prevention of dieting-induced disorders: modifying negative food- and body-related attitudes.

This study investigated the extent to which negative attitudes that focus on the body and on eating could be modified within the context of a group discussion about how other young women's attitudes might be changed. The findings suggest that facilitated group discussion would be a useful tool for changing attitudes and behavioral intention in a preventive intervention aimed towards dieting-related disorders.

Dieting, binge eating, and some of their correlates among secondary school girls.

A total of 440 girls from three private schools in Sydney completed a self-report questionnaire that asked about their body- and weight-related attitudes and practices, and assessed their reactions to the phenomenology of binge eating. The findings emphasize the integral relationship between dieting and disordered eating. Those who wanted to lose at least 7 kg, and were dieting most of the time, were more likely to be categorized as having a "severe" binge eating problem than were those who were happy with their weight and were "never" or "rarely" dieting.

The role of restraint and disinhibition in appetite control.

Fifty-six women classified according to their restraint and disinhibition scores, using Stunkard and Messick's (1985) Eating Questionnaire, participated in an experiment in which the proportion of carbohydrate in a prepared meal and the knowledge provided to them about its contents were varied. Measures were taken of their desire for food and their willingness to eat, as well as the total intake and the amount of carbohydrate and of protein they ate at an ad libitum test meal 4 hr later. While the results do not support the argument that laboratory-induced counter-regulatory eating can be attributed to disinhibition, they emphasize the usefulness of our experimental model which allows the interaction of dietary, cognitive and personality factors to be examined concurrently in investigations of appetite control.

Assessing bulimics' dissatisfaction with their bodies.

A Body Mapping Questionnaire and a Colour-the-Body Task were devised to assess the dissatisfaction that bulimics feel about their body, beyond their preoccupation with its weight. When 134 women, 67 diagnosed with bulimia nervosa and 67 non-patient controls were matched for age, weight and height, the bulimics showed greater overall dislike for their body, and for about half of its specified parts.

Towards the prevention of eating disorders. Some preliminary findings from an empirical investigation.

The high incidence of disordered eating among female adolescents and young adult women has been noted in surveys carried out in Australia, the USA, New Zealand and the UK. While a critical feature that distinguishes those who go on to develop anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa is their sense of a loss of control over their eating, the psychological and nutritional concomitants of this loss of control have not been empirically investigated. Preliminary findings are described from an experimental study which is aimed at systematically investigating the relationship between dietary composition and consumatory patterns, hunger and satiety. The results are discussed in terms of the possible role of 'diet' in perpetuating the symptoms of bulimia nervosa and anorexia nervosa.

Attitude correlates of weight control among secondary school boys and girls.

A study of the psychological correlates of weight control, sex, and actual and desired weight was performed. A regression analysis of the attitudes of 240 Australian high school students showed that the girls' responses reflected a significantly different concern with how they look, dieting and appearance from the boys. The implications of these findings for identifying those at risk to weight-related illnesses, including anorexia nervosa, are explored.

Evaluating a group treatment for bulimia.

A multifaceted group-based approach to the treatment of bulimia is described, that focuses on recovering a sense of control by examining how control is relinquished, and can be regained by developing adaptive attitudes and behaviour about food and eating, the body, and interpersonal relationships. Results from an end of programme assessment and then at six month, 12 month and 18 month follow-ups indicate that a successful reduction in bingeing and vomiting and a variety of other changes was achieved and maintained by 36 of the 40 participants.

Bulimia: the emergence of a syndrome.

The literature on bulimia, which has regarded it as a psychiatric entity or as a form of disordered eating, suggests that this behaviour is now widespread among the obese, among those with anorexia nervosa and those of normal weight. While physiological, psychological and sociocultural explanations and forms of treatment have been proposed, a holistic perspective on the context in which it occurs can distinguish bulimia nervosa and bulimarexia from 'simple' bulimia.