Eating disorders, perceived control, assertiveness and hostility

Abstract

There are anecdotal claims that eating disorder patients perceive themselves as highly controlled by the family and by society, but that they do not show assertive behaviour towards controllers. Anorexic and bulimic females were compared with female psychiatric patients, dieters and non-dieting controls on measures of eating disorder symptomatology, locus of control, assertiveness, inwardly directed hostility, family control and family encouragement of independence. Eating disorder patients reported significantly more external control, more inwardly directed hostility, less self-assertion and less family encouragement of independence than dieters and non-dieting controls, but they did not differ from psychiatric controls. Most of the characteristics seen in eating disorder subjects were also reported by psychiatric controls.

Personality Correlates of Anorexic Symptomatology in Female Undergraduates

“…Although the present study uncovered no relationship between anorexic symptomatology and self-directed hostility, Williams and her colleagues (Williams et al, 1990(Williams et al, , 1993 found that individuals with anorexia or bulimia nervosa report higher levels of self-directed hostility compared with nonpsychiatric controls. It may be that self-directed hostility emerges later in the evolution of anorexia and thus would be less prevalent in a sample of undergraduates who were not diagnosable.…”

“…This measure of inwardly directed hostility has been significantly correlated with an anorexic sample (r = .64; Williams, Chamove, & Millar, 1990). Internal consistency (KR-20) from the present investigation was .78 for the Self-Directed Hostility subscale.…”

Psychological Correlates of Anorexic and Bulimic Symptomatology

“…By not expressing their genuine thoughts and feelings, these anorexics and bulimics are giving up their rights so that others will not be offended or angry. Williams, Chamove, and Millar (1990), unable to find published studies that directly examined the relationship between assertiveness and eating disorders, hypothesized a relationship between the two based solely on anecdotal evidence. Assessing assertiveness in a somewhat indirect manner (i.e., self-report), they found that anorexics and bulimics were less assertive than non-psychiatric controls.…”

“…In an attempt to correct the methodological weaknesses suggested in the Williams et al (1990) study, a similar investigation (Williams et al, 1993) was designed to compare anorexics and bulimics to obese dieters, nonobese dieters, and normal controls on many of the same variables (e.g., self-directed hostility, assertiveness, and locus of control). Williams et al (1993) also examined these groups in terms of self-esteem explaining that the results in the previous investigation suggested that eating disordered women would report lower self-esteem.…”

Comparison of eating disorders and other dietary/weight groups on measures of perceived control, assertiveness, self-esteem, and self-directed hostility

“…These methodological weaknesses in the Williams et al (1990) study, along with the sparcity and contradictory results of other research, prevent any firm conclusions. Further investigation is required to establish whether the four aforementioned characteristics are important features of eating disorder patients that differentiate these patients from other dietary/weight groups as well as from normal controls.…”