Title:	Revisiting the Postulates of Etiological Models of Eating Disorders: Questioning Body Checking as a Longer-Term Maintaining Factor
Authors:	Opladen, Vanessa Vivell, Maj-Britt Vocks, Silja Hartmann, Andrea
ORCID of the author:	https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9916-2469 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8498-9466 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6251-3763
Abstract:	Body checking (BC) is not only inherent to the maintenance of eating disorders but is also widespread among healthy females. According to etiological models, while BC serves as an affect-regulating behavior in the short term, in the longer term it is assumed to be disorder-maintaining and also produces more negative affect. The present study therefore aimed to empirically examine the proposed longer-term consequences of increased BC. In an online study, N = 167 women tracked their daily amount of BC over a total of 7 days: Following a 1-day baseline assessment of typical BC, participants were asked to check their bodies in an typical manner for 3 days and with a 3-fold increased frequency for 3-days. Before and after each BC episode, the impact of BC on affect, eating disorder symptoms, general pathology and endorsement of different functions of BC was assessed. Participants showed longer-term consequences of increased BC in terms of increased negative affect and general pathology, while eating disorder symptoms remained unaffected. In the case of typical BC, participants showed decreased general pathology and anxiety. Furthermore, the endorsement of a higher number of BC functions led to increased negative affect and an increased amount of typical BC. The findings support the theoretically assumed role of maladaptive BC in maintaining negative emotion in the longer term. However, though requiring replication, our finding of positive effects of typical BC calls into question the overall dysfunctionality of BC among non-clinical women who are not at risk of developing an eating disorder.
Citations:	Opladen V, Vivell M-B, Vocks S and Hartmann AS (2022): Revisiting the Postulates of Etiological Models of Eating Disorders: Questioning Body Checking as a Longer-Term Maintaining Factor. Front. Psychiatry 12:795189
URL:	https://doi.org/10.48693/240 https://osnadocs.ub.uni-osnabrueck.de/handle/ds-202301318156
Subject Keywords:	body checking; emotion; shape and weight concerns; theory of eating disorders; body image
Issue Date:	13-Jan-2022
License name:	Attribution 4.0 International
License url:	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Type of publication:	Einzelbeitrag in einer wissenschaftlichen Zeitschrift [Article]
Appears in Collections:	FB08 - Hochschulschriften Open-Access-Publikationsfonds

This item is licensed under a Creative Commons License