Looking good. BMI, attractiveness bias and visual attention

Roefs, Anne; Jansen, Anita; Moresi, Sofie; Willems, Paul; Grootel, Sara van; Borgh, Anouk van der

doi:10.1016/j.appet.2008.04.008

Cited by 83 publications

(81 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…In turn, this identifies vigilance towards thin-ideal bodies as more maladaptive and a greater risk factor for developing an eating disorder, as opposed to the avoidance of non-thin bodies. These findings corroborate previous empirical research showing an association between bias to thin-ideal body shapes and eating disorder pathology [7,9,14]. The selective attentional pattern may represent maladaptive social comparison strategies [54] in the sense that young women with elevated eating disorder pathology engage in upward social comparison by comparing their body to those perceived as more attractive (i.e., attentional bias to thin bodies) and avoid those perceived as less attractive (i.e., attentional avoidance of non-thin bodies).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…Similarly, women high on eating disorder symptoms spent more time looking at attractive compared to unattractive body parts of other women [7]. These eye-tracking results have been replicated in a sample of overweight men and women viewing images of other men and women, respectively [13] and also in young women who were both dissatisfied with their own bodies and had a higher body mass index (BMI) [14]. Moreover, women with bulimia nervosa showed significantly longer fixations, relative to controls, when presented with images of female bodies that were thinner in comparison to the self [9].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

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The mediating role of rumination in the relation between attentional bias towards thin female bodies and eating disorder symptomatology

et al. 2017

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The present study sought to investigate the association between selective attentional processing of body images, rumination, and eating disorder symptoms in young women. Seventy-three undergraduate female students (ages 17–24) completed a modified dot-probe task to assess whether young women showed a differential attentional bias pattern towards thin and non-thin female bodies. Participants also completed self-report measures of eating disorder pathology. It was found that increased reports of dietary restraint and body dissatisfaction were associated with both greater attentional bias towards thin bodies and avoidance of non-thin bodies (as compared to neutral images), although the former relationship was stronger than the latter. The results suggest attentional vigilance to thin-ideal images plays a greater role in the potential development and/or maintenance of eating disorder symptoms, at least in a university sample of young women. Results also revealed that eating disorder-specific rumination mediated the relationship between attentional bias to thin ideal images and eating disorder symptoms. These findings build on existing research and theories, for example the impaired disengagement model of rumination, and have potential clinical applications such as specifically targeting ruminative and/or attentional processes in the prevention and/or treatment of eating disorder symptoms.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

The mediating role of rumination in the relation between attentional bias towards thin female bodies and eating disorder symptomatology

et al. 2017

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“…The first one is the clothing effect. The typical stimuli used in previous research included photographic or computerised images of females in swimwear (Roefs et al, 2008;Lykins et al, 2014), underwear (Jansen et al, 2005), Lycra (Blechert et al, 2009;Jannelle et al, 2009) or nude (Glauert et al, 2010;Horndasch et al, 2012), thus revealing the shape of the figure in great detail. What is yet to be considered is the viewing behaviour for images where the body regions are somewhat ambiguous, such as in everyday clothing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Women gaze behaviour in assessing female bodies: the effects of clothing, body size, own body composition and body satisfaction

Cundall

Guo

2015

Psychological Research

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Often with minimally clothed figures depicting extreme body sizes, previous studies have shown women tend to gaze at evolutionary determinants of attractiveness when viewing female bodies, possibly for self-evaluation purposes, and their gaze distribution is modulated by own body dissatisfaction level. To explore to what extent women's body-viewing gaze behaviour is affected by clothing type, dress size, subjective measurements of regional body satisfaction and objective measurements of own body composition (e.g., chest size, body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio), in this self-paced body attractiveness and body size judgement experiment, we compared healthy, young women's gaze distributions when viewing female bodies in tight and loose clothing of different dress sizes. In contrast to tight clothing, loose clothing biased gaze away from the waist-hip to the leg region, and subsequently led to enhanced body attractiveness ratings and body size underestimation for larger female bodies, indicating the important role of clothing in mediating women's body perception. When viewing preferred female bodies, women's higher satisfaction of a specific body region was associated with an increased gaze towards neighbouring body areas, implying satisfaction might reduce the need for comparison of confident body parts; furthermore undesirable body composition measurements were correlated with a gaze avoidance process if the construct was less changeable (i.e. chest size) but a gaze comparison process if the region was more changeable (i.e. body mass index, dress size). Clearly, own body satisfaction and body composition measurements had an evident impact on women's body-viewing gaze allocation, possibly through different cognitive processes.3

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“…In eye-tracking studies the number of fixations is related to the amount of information extracted from a stimulus [54,55]. Besides the number of fixations, dwell time, the amount of time that attention spends at a location once it is deployed to that location [56], can also be used as an indicator of the amount of attention paid to a stimulus [57]. Dwell-time represents the total duration (in milliseconds) of time that was spent looking at a stimulus [37].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eye movement responses to health messages on cigarette packages

Kessels

Ruiter

2012

BMC Public Health

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BackgroundWhile the majority of the health messages on cigarette packages contain threatening health information, previous studies indicate that risk information can trigger defensive reactions, especially when the information is self-relevant (i.e., smokers). Providing coping information, information that provides help for quitting smoking, might increase attention to health messages instead of triggering defensive reactions.MethodsEye-movement registration can detect attention preferences for different health education messages over a longer period of time during message exposure. In a randomized, experimental study with 23 smoking and 41 non-smoking student volunteers, eye-movements were recorded for sixteen self-created cigarette packages containing health texts that presented either high risk or coping information combined with a high threat or a low threat smoking-related photo.ResultsResults of the eye movement data showed that smokers tend to spend more time looking (i.e., more unique fixations and longer dwell time) at the coping information than at the high risk information irrespective of the content of the smoking-related photo. Non-smokers tend to spend more time looking at the high risk information than at the coping information when the information was presented in combination with a high threat smoking photo. When a low threat photo was presented, non-smokers paid more attention to the coping information than to the high risk information. Results for the smoking photos showed more attention allocation for low threat photos that were presented in combination with high risk information than for low threat photos in combination with coping information. No attention differences were found for the high threat photos.ConclusionsNon-smokers demonstrated an attention preference for high risk information as opposed to coping information, but only when text information was presented in combination with a high threat photo. For smokers, however, our findings suggest more attention allocation for coping information than for health risk information. This preference for coping information is not reflected in current health messages to motivate smokers to quit smoking. Coping information should be more frequently implemented in health message design to increase attention for these messages and thus contribute to effective persuasion.

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Looking good. BMI, attractiveness bias and visual attention

Cited by 83 publications

References 18 publications

The mediating role of rumination in the relation between attentional bias towards thin female bodies and eating disorder symptomatology

The mediating role of rumination in the relation between attentional bias towards thin female bodies and eating disorder symptomatology

Women gaze behaviour in assessing female bodies: the effects of clothing, body size, own body composition and body satisfaction

Eye movement responses to health messages on cigarette packages

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