Female body dissatisfaction and attentional bias to body images evaluated using visual search

Journal article


Cass, John, Giltrap, Georgina and Talbot, Daniel. (2020). Female body dissatisfaction and attentional bias to body images evaluated using visual search. Frontiers in Psychology. 10, p. Article 2821. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02821
AuthorsCass, John, Giltrap, Georgina and Talbot, Daniel
Abstract

One factor, believed to predict body dissatisfaction is an individual’s propensity to attend to certain classes of human body image stimuli relative to other classes. These attentional biases have been evaluated using a range of paradigms, including dot-probe, eye-tracking and free view visual search, which have yielded a range of – often contradictory – findings. This study is the first to employ a classic compound visual search task to investigate the relationship between body dissatisfaction and attentional biases to images of underweight and with-overweight female bodies. Seventy-one undergraduate females, varying their degree of body dissatisfaction and Body Mass Index (BMI), searched for a horizontal or vertical target line among tilted lines. A separate female body image was presented within close proximity to each line. On average, faster search times were obtained when the target line was paired with a uniquely underweight or with-overweight body relative to neutral (average weight only) trials indicating that body weight-related images can effectively guide search. This congruent search effect was stronger for individuals with high eating restraint (a behavioral manifestation of body image disturbance) when search involved a uniquely underweight body. By contrast, individuals with high BMIs searched for lines more rapidly when paired with with-overweight rather than underweight bodies, than did individuals with lower BMIs. For incongruent trials – in which a unique body was paired with a distractor rather than the target – search times were indistinguishable from neutral trials, indicating that the deviant bodies neither compulsorily “captured” attention nor reduced participants’ ability to disengage their attention from either underweight or with-overweight bodies. These results imply the existence of attentional strategies which reflect one’s current body and goal-directed eating behaviors.

Keywordsvisual search; attentional bias; body dissatisfaction; body image; body perception; body mass index
Year2020
JournalFrontiers in Psychology
Journal citation10, p. Article 2821
PublisherFrontiers Media S.A.
ISSN1664-1078
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02821
PubMed ID32038346
Scopus EID2-s2.0-85079041743
PubMed Central IDPMC6987376
Open accessPublished as ‘gold’ (paid) open access
Page range1-13
Publisher's version
License
File Access Level
Open
Output statusPublished
Publication dates
Online22 Jan 2020
Publication process dates
Accepted29 Nov 2019
Deposited28 May 2025
Additional information

Copyright © 2020 Cass, Giltrap and Talbot. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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