The present study examined body image and associated psychological traits in 154 college men. The comprehensive battery of measures included a novel computerized test of body image perception, the Somatomorphic Matrix, in which subjects could navigate through a range of body images, spanning a wide range of body fat and muscularity, to answer various questions posed by the computer. Subjects al...

The Tripartite Influence Model of body image and eating disturbance proposes that three formative influences (peer, parents, and media) affect body image and eating problems through two mediational mechanisms: internalization of the thin-ideal and appearance comparison processes. The current study evaluated this model in a sample of 325 sixth through eighth grade girls. Simple path analyses ind...

OBJECTIVE We explored the extent to which changes in emotional states following exposure to images of idealized bodies predict unhealthy body change attitudes and behaviors in women and men, and whether particular psychological traits mediate these effects. METHOD One hundred thirty-three women and 93 men were assessed for unhealthy attitudes and behaviors related to body weight and muscles u...

The aim of this article was to study the effect of virtual-reality exposure to situations that are emotionally significant for patients with eating disorders (ED) on the stability of body-image distortion and body-image dissatisfaction. A total of 85 ED patients and 108 non-ED students were randomly exposed to four experimental virtual environments: a kitchen with low-calorie food, a kitchen wi...

Sociocultural models of disordered eating lack comprehensive explanations as to how thin ideal internalization leads to body dissatisfaction. This study examined two social psychological theories as explanations of this relation, namely social comparison and objectification theories, in a sample of 265 women attending a Southeastern university. Social comparison (both general and appearance-rel...

BACKGROUND Body satisfaction is an important issue for youth. Youth with more severe asthma may have experiences and emotions associated with less body satisfaction; however, this has not been studied. OBJECTIVE To identify correlates of body dissatisfaction in youth with asthma. METHODS Sixty-three females and 60 males, ages 8-18 years with asthma, completed measures of body dissatisfactio...

The issue of thin-ideal (or muscularity ideal for males) media effects on viewers continues to be debated and discussed within the scientific community. Many scholars have concluded that thin-ideal media can have an appreciable effect on viewers. More recently several scholars have contested this issue suggesting that media effects may be small to negligible or limited to groups of individuals ...

Although self-harm has been observed among patients with eating disorders, the effects of such tendencies on treatment outcomes are unclear. The current study employed structural equation modeling to (a) evaluate the relationship between self-harm and changes in body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness in a large sample of patients (n = 2061) who underwent inpatient treatment, and (b) to exa...

Weight related teasing, a verbal form of bullying, is an established predictor of body dissatisfaction and disordered eating. However, as many as 11% of university students report experiencing other forms of bullying, such as physical, social, and cyberbullying which has been linked to depression, anxiety and substance abuse. The current study aims to establish the impact of other forms of bull...