The Effect of Sociotropy and Sociocultural Pressure on Binge Eating: The Mediation Effect of Cognitive Distortion

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the relation among sociotropy, sociocultural pressure to thinness, cognitive distortion and binge eating in adolescent girls and to investigate whether cognitive distortion mediate that sociotropy and sociocultural pressures affect binge eating. For this purpose, a total of 551 female adolescent composed of 206 middle school girls and 345 high school girls were involved in the study and responded to the self-reported questionnaire. Revised Personal Style Inventory, Tripartite Influence Scale-Revised, The Mizes Anorectic Cognition Scale and Bulimia Test Revised were used to measure sociotropy, sociocultural pressures, cognitive distortion and binge eating. Mediated effect of cognitive distortion among sociotropy, sociocultural pressures and binge eating was verified using structural equation modeling. The results were as follows. First. adolescent girls discriminated into binge eating group and normal group according to the standard of Bulimia test revised scores. The result of compared two groups was that binge eating group have a significantly higher body mass index(BMI), sociotropy, and sociocultural pressures, cognitive distortion than normal group. Second, sociotropy, sociocultural pressure and cognitive distortion were related significantly to binge eating. Third, The result of mediated analysis were sociotropy, sociocultural pressure and cognitive distortion had a significant effect on binge eating behavior and sociotropy, sociocultural pressure fully mediating model of the cognitive distortion fitted the data. In other words, sociotropy and sociocultural pressure indirectly affect cognitive distortion and binge eating behavior by through cognitive distortion. Finally, the clinical implications and several limitations of the present study were discussed.