Greater body appreciation moderates the association between maladaptive attentional biases and body dissatisfaction in undergraduate women

Abstract

Attentional biases for weight-related information are thought to contribute to maintenance of body dissatisfaction and eating disorders. Women with greater body appreciation may pay less attention to thin-ideal cues if body appreciation protects them from negative effects of thin-ideal media, and if so, they may be less susceptible to development of maladaptive attentional biases. The present study used eye-gaze tracking to measure attention to weight-related words/images in 167 body-dissatisfied undergraduate women (aged 17–39 years) to examine the associations among body dissatisfaction, body appreciation, and attentional biases. Participants viewed displays of thin-related, fat-related, and neutral words/images while their eye fixations were tracked over 8-s intervals. We hypothesized body appreciation (as measured by the Body Appreciation Scale) would moderate the documented association between body dissatisfaction and attentional biases for thin-related information only, such that as body appreciation increased, the strength of the relationship between body dissatisfaction and attentional biases would decrease. Results indicated that body appreciation moderated the association between body dissatisfaction and attentional biases for thin-related words only. With low body appreciation, body dissatisfaction was positively associated with attention to thin-related words. With high body appreciation, there was an inverse association between body dissatisfaction and attention to thin-related words. Results suggest that body appreciation may be an effective prevention target for reducing maladaptive attentional biases.