Time course of attentional biases toward body shapes: The impact of body dissatisfaction.

Using a dot-probe discrimination task and a between-subjects design, we examined the time course of attentional biases (facilitated attention, delayed disengagement, and avoidance) toward thin versus fat bodies and explored the influence of body dissatisfaction (BD) on attention allocation among a sample of 163 women from the general population. Three stimulus presentation times were used: 100ms, 500ms, and 1500ms. We also used neutral body-shape-related stimuli as neutral stimuli related to the concept of interest to overcome the limitations of previous studies. At 500ms, the results highlighted delayed disengagement from very thin and negatively assessed bodies among women with high BD. This mechanism, which leads to attentional focalization on bodies that are difficult to achieve, might be considered dysfunctional because it may maintain or reinforce BD. Results at 100ms and 1500ms, as well as results for fat bodies, were not conclusive.

Implicitly assessed attitudes toward body shape and food: the moderating roles of dietary restraint and disinhibition.

BACKGROUND: Attitudes toward body shape and food play a role in the development and maintenance of dysfunctional eating behaviors. Nevertheless, they are rarely investigated together. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the interrelationships between implicitly assessed attitudes toward body shape and food and to investigate the moderating effect on these associations of interindividual differences in problematic and nonproblematic eating behaviors (i.e., flexible versus rigid cognitive control dimension of restraint, disinhibition). METHODS: One hundred and twenty-one young women from the community completed two adapted versions of the Affect Misattribution Procedure to implicitly assess attitudes toward body shape (i.e., thin and overweight bodies) and food (i.e., "permitted" and "forbidden" foods), as well as the Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire to evaluate restraint and disinhibition. RESULTS: The results revealed that an implicit preference for thinness was positively associated with a positive attitude toward permitted (i.e., low-calorie) foods. This congruence between implicitly assessed attitudes toward body shape and food was significant at average and high levels of flexible control (i.e., functional component of eating). Moreover, an implicit preference for thinness was also positively associated with a positive attitude toward forbidden (i.e., high-calorie) foods. This discordance between implicitly assessed attitudes was significant at average and high levels of rigid control and disinhibition (i.e., dysfunctional components of eating). CONCLUSIONS: These findings shed new light on the influence of congruent or discordant implicitly assessed attitudes toward body shape and food on normal and problematic eating behaviors; clinical implications are discussed.