Male body dissatisfaction, eating disorder symptoms, body composition, and attentional bias to body stimuli evaluated using visual search

Journal article


Talbot, Daniel, Smith, Evelyn and Cass, John. (2019). Male body dissatisfaction, eating disorder symptoms, body composition, and attentional bias to body stimuli evaluated using visual search. Journal of Experimental Psychopathology. 10(2), pp. 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1177/2043808719848292
AuthorsTalbot, Daniel, Smith, Evelyn and Cass, John
Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between body dissatisfaction, eating disorder symptoms, and attentional bias to images of male bodies using a compound visual search task. Sixty-three male participants searched for a horizontal or vertical target line among tilted lines. A separate male body image was presented within proximity to each line. Overall, search times were faster when the target line was paired with a muscular or obese body and distractor lines were paired with bodies of average muscularity and body fat (congruent trials) than on neutral trials, in which only average muscularity and body fat images were shown. Attentional bias for muscular bodies was correlated with muscle dissatisfaction, eating restraint, and shape concern, and attentional bias for obese bodies was correlated with eating restraint. For incongruent trials, in which a single muscular or obese body was paired with a distractor line, search times were indistinguishable from neutral trials. Unexpectedly, we found a negative association between search times and both body fat dissatisfaction and eating disorder symptoms in conditions where obese bodies were paired with distracting stimuli. This result implicates a potential role for attentional filtering and/or avoidance of obese bodies in predicting body fat dissatisfaction and eating disorder symptomology.

Keywordsbodies; body dissatisfaction; body image; compound visual search; male
Year2019
JournalJournal of Experimental Psychopathology
Journal citation10 (2), pp. 1-13
PublisherSAGE Publications
ISSN2043-8087
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1177/2043808719848292
Scopus EID2-s2.0-85078048839
Open accessPublished as ‘gold’ (paid) open access
Page range1-13
Publisher's version
License
File Access Level
Open
Output statusPublished
Publication dates
Online23 May 2019
Publication process dates
Deposited26 May 2025
Additional information

© The Author(s) 2019.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

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