Failure, self-evaluation, and feeling fat in women

Abstract

Striegel-Moore, McAvey, and Rodin (1986) hypothesized that many women who feel fat have self-schemas in which body weight is a central component, and that any experience which gives rise to self-evaluation among such women leads to evaluation of body and weight. We employed a 2×2 design (Restrained/Unrestrained × Success/Failure) with 48 undergraduate women to test whether restrained women who experienced failure would evaluate their bodies more negatively, or subsequently describe their bodies in more evaluative terms than those who experienced success, or unrestrained eaters. None of the women felt worse about their bodies after experiencing failure. INDSCAL analysis on a Semantic Differential questionnaire, however, demonstrated that in contrast to unrestrained women, all restrained women described their bodies in an evaluative manner.