Do highly body dissatisfied women exhibit attentional biases towards thin and overweight figures?

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Do highly body dissatisfied women exhibit attentional biases towards thin and overweight figures? Ashley Alford1* and Alison Bowling1 1 Southern Cross University, Psychology, School of Health and Human Sciences, Australia Aims: Body dissatisfaction has been linked as a direct precursor for life threatening eating disorders such as Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa. Current research indicates that attentional bias may play a key role in the development and maintenance of body dissatisfaction in women due to the constant exposure to media depicted images. Therefore, we conducted an eye-tracking study to investigate whether individuals with high body dissatisfaction show a heightened attentional bias towards images of thin and overweight bodies compared to low body dissatisfied individuals. We also examined whether there was a general tendency for participants to show an attentional bias towards overweight bodies opposed to medium bodies and thin bodies opposed to medium bodies. Method: Thirty six participants completed a body dissatisfaction scale, and subsequently took part in an eye-tracking study. An eye-tracker was used to measure and record both gaze direction and gaze duration frequencies whilst exposing participants to images of females presented for 2000ms. Each trial compared either thin with medium images, or overweight with medium images. Results: Results indicated that overall participants viewed the thin images for a significantly longer time (M=.451, M= .534 respectively) than the overweight images F(1, 34)= 9.806, p = .04, ηp2= .224). However, there were no significant effects of gaze direction towards the thin or overweight bodies. Similarly, no significant effects were obtained for direction or duration bias towards the thin or overweight bodies across the high and low body dissatisfied groups. Conclusions: These data show that overall, participants orient their attention more towards thin body images. However, body dissatisfaction level appears to have no effect on such attentional biases. Keywords: attentional bias, body image, Body Dissatisfaction, eye-movement Conference: 12th Annual Psychology Research Conference, 2015, Coffs Harbour, Australia, 25 Sep - 26 Sep, 2015. Presentation Type: Research Topic: Psychology Citation: Alford A and Bowling A (2015). Do highly body dissatisfied women exhibit attentional biases towards thin and overweight figures?. Front. Psychol. Conference Abstract: 12th Annual Psychology Research Conference, 2015. doi: 10.3389/conf.fpsyg.2015.66.00015 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 23 Sep 2015; Published Online: 23 Sep 2015. * Correspondence: Ms. Ashley Alford, Southern Cross University, Psychology, School of Health and Human Sciences, Coffs Harbour, NSW, 2450, Australia, a.alford.10@student.scu.edu.au Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Ashley Alford Alison Bowling Google Ashley Alford Alison Bowling Google Scholar Ashley Alford Alison Bowling PubMed Ashley Alford Alison Bowling Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.