Norm-Violation, Norm-Adherence, and Overeating

Two routes to overeating are discussed; they are both premised on people’s strong motivation to avoid eating excessively and thereby avoid negative ascriptions associated with the overeating/overweight stereotype. The first route to overeating involves infractions of restrictive intake norms: people who attempt to restrict their intake by implementing dietary rules often run afoul of disinhibitory circumstances that undermine the self-control upon which successful dieting depends. The second route to overeating involves adherence to restrictive intake norms in situations where it is unclear how much eating is permitted. People search the environment for indicants of what constitutes permissible intake and end up relying on such arbitrary criteria as portion size and the intake of other people. Using such criteria derived from the eating situation often leads to overeating even while individuals believe that they are successfully restricting their intake

Eating Disorders

Eating disorders are causing increasing problems in our society, and many approaches to treatment are used, some more successful than others. This volume provides therapists and students with practical and evidence-based guidance on diagnosis and treatment of eating disorders. It builds on existing knowledge as well as the enormous wealth of clinical experience that the authors have developed over the past three decades. It assumes a basic understanding of therapeutic intervention and some clinical training. This book will be of interest not only to those clinicians who have developed a special expertise in eating disorders, but to psychologists, psychiatrists, general practitioners, dietitians, social workers, nurses, and other allied mental health practitioners as well

The processing of thin ideals in fashion magazines: a source of social comparison or fantasy?

The present study aimed to investigate the role of processing in women’s responses to thin idealized images of beauty. A sample of 144 women viewed magazine advertisements containing either thin ideal or product images. Instructional set was manipulated with three levels: control, social comparison, and fantasy instructions. It was found that exposure to thin ideal images led to increased negative mood and body dissatisfaction, while instructional set had its effect on positive mood and body dissatisfaction. For thin ideal images, social comparison instructions led to greater negative mood and body dissatisfaction, while fantasy instructions led to improved positive mood. Importantly, regression analyses indicated that both comparison processing (negatively) and fantasy processing (positively) were associated with women’s response to thin ideal images. It was concluded that the nature of the processing women engage in is crucial to their response to thin ideal images

Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we diet: Effects of anticipated deprivation on food intake in restrained and unrestrained eaters.

Central Asia - Uzbek with embroidery machine, UzbekistanColorVolume 136, Page 1

Is the Body the Self? Women and Body Image

This paper discusses how women’s body image or experience of the body influences their identity and self-image. What are the implications of this tendency to equate the body and the self? For many women, being a dieter represents not only something that they do, but also an important aspect of how they see themselves. We propose that choosing to become a chronic dieter is a means of regulating not just one’s feelings, but also one’s identity and self-image when those central aspects of the self feel threatened. Weight-loss dieting is often unsuccessful, however, and repeated dieting attempts may increase weight as often as they reduce it, so using body shape to determine self-worth or identity is a maladaptive strategy for most women

Public health strategies to reduce sugar intake in the UK: An exploration of public perceptions using digital spaces

Objective: To explore UK public perceptions of children's sugar consumption, Public Health England's Change4Life Sugar Smart app and the Soft Drinks Industry Levy, using solicited and unsolicited digital data. Methods: Data from three digital spaces were used as follows: (1) an online questionnaire advertised on parenting forums; (2) posts to UK online parenting forums; and (3) English language Tweets from Twitter. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics and qualitative data using content and inductive thematic analysis. Results: Data were (study 1) 184 questionnaire participants; (study 2) 412 forum posts; and (study 3) 618 Tweets. In study 1, 94.0% (n = 173) agreed that children in the UK consumed too much sugar and this had a negative health effect (98.4%, n = 181). Environments (n = 135, 73.4%), media/advertising (n = 112, 60.9%) and parents (n = 107, 58.2%) were all reported as barriers to changing children's sugar intake. In study 2, more posts were negative towards the Soft Drinks Industry Levy (n = 189, 45.9%) than positive (n = 145, 35.2%), and themes about the inability of the Levy to affect sugar consumption in children and childhood obesity emerged. Other themes related to distrust of the government, food industry and retailers. In study 3, the Sugar Smart app was viewed positively (n = 474, 76.7%) with its function associated solely with identification of sugar content. Conclusions: Participants accepted the necessity of sugar reduction in children, but recognised the complexity of behaviour change. Public health activities were not always perceived as effective strategies for health promotion. There was some distrust in government, public health officials and the food industry. A less simplistic approach to sugar reduction and more credible sources of information may, therefore, be welcomed by the public

Neural processing of social rejection: the role of schizotypal personality traits

A fear of being rejected can cause perceptions of more insecurity and stress in close relationships. Healthy individuals activate the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) when experiencing social rejection, while those who are vulnerable to depression deactivate the dACC presumably to downregulate salience of rejection cues and minimize distress. Schizotypal individuals, characterized by unusual perceptual experiences and/or odd beliefs, are more rejection sensitive than normal. We tested the hypothesis, for the first time, that individuals with high schizotypy also have an altered dACC response to rejection stimuli. Twenty-six healthy individuals, 14 with low schizotypy (LS) and 12 with high schizotypy (HS), viewed depictions of rejection and acceptance and neutral scenes while undergoing functional MRI. Activation maps in LS and HS groups during each image type were compared using SPM5, and their relation to participant mood and subjective ratings of the images was examined. During rejection relative to neutral scenes, LS activated and HS deactivated the bilateral dACC, right superior frontal gyrus, and left ventral prefrontal cortex. Across both groups, a temporo-occipito-parieto-cerebellar network was active during rejection, and a left fronto-parietal network during acceptance, relative to neutral scenes, and the bilateral lingual gyrus during rejection relative to acceptance scenes. Our finding of dACC-dorso-ventral PFC activation in LS, but deactivation in HS individuals when perceiving social rejection scenes suggests that HS individuals attach less salience to and distance themselves from such stimuli. This may enable them to cope with their higher-than-normal sensitivity to rejection

Food after deprivation rewards the earlier eating

Food intake can be increased by learning to anticipate the omission of subsequent meals. We present here a new theory that such anticipatory eating depends on an associative process of instrumental reinforcement by the nutritional repletion that occurs when access to food is restored. Our evidence over the last decade from a smooth-brained omnivore has been that food after deprivation rewards intake even when those reinforced ingestive responses occur long before the physiological signals from renewed assimilation. Effects of food consumed after self-deprivation might therefore reward extra eating in human beings, through brain mechanisms that could operate outside awareness. That would have implications for efforts to reduce body weight. This food reward mechanism could be contributing to the failure of the dietary component of interventions on obesity within controlled trials of the management or prevention of disorders such as hypertension, atherosclerosis and type 2 diabetes

When my object becomes me:The mere ownership of an object elevates domain-specific self-efficacy

Past research on the mere ownership effect has shown that when people own an object, they perceive the owned objects more favorably than the comparable non-owned objects. The present research extends this idea, showing that when people own an object functional to the self, they perceive an increase in their self-efficacy. Three studies were conducted to demonstrate this new form of the mere ownership effect. In Study 1, participants reported an increase in their knowledge level by the mere ownership of reading materials (a reading package in Study 1a, and lecture notes in Study 1b). In Study 2, participants reported an increase in their resilience to sleepiness by merely owning a piece of chocolate that purportedly had a sleepiness-combating function. In Study 3, participants who merely owned a flower essence that is claimed to boost creativity reported having higher creativity efficacy. The findings provided insights on how associations with objects alter one\u27s self-perception