سرمایه گذاری ظاهری واسطه ارتباط بین ترس از ارزیابی منفی و خویشتن داری غذایی

This study investigated whether appearance investment explains the association between fear of negative evaluation and dietary restraint. Data were collected from 305 undergraduate female participants in an online survey. Mediation analyses were conducted using Preacher and Hayes (2008) Indirect Mediation macro. Results showed that both components of appearance investment that is, holding appearance as central to self-definition and the tendency to engage in appearance management behaviours, mediate the association between fear of negative evaluation and dietary restraint. The Baron and Kenny (1986) method further showed that holding appearance as central to self-definition fully mediates this association but that engagement in appearance management behaviours only partially mediates it. These results suggest that appearance investment could prompt women to diet to try to lose weight to fend off feared negative evaluation from others.

Dietary restriction refers to the “tendency to restrict food intake consciously in order to maintain body weight or to promote weight loss” (Westenhoefer, 1991, p. 45). Approximately 25.9% of female undergraduate students report having engaged in dietary restriction (Luce, Crowther, & Pole, 2008). This is a concern, as initial self-reported dieting predicts increases in bulimic symptoms over time among female adolescents (Stice, 2001). This latter finding is supported by experimental studies showing that disruption of cognitive control leads to disinhibited eating, a proxy for binging, in chronic dieters (Polivy, Herman, & Deo, 2010). Therefore, understanding the factors associated with dietary restriction is of great importance. Fear of negative evaluation recently has emerged as a contributor to chronic dieting. It refers to fearing the evaluations of others, experiencing distress over being negatively evaluated, and avoiding situations where one may be evaluated (Watson & Friend, 1969). In non-clinical samples, fear of negative evaluation is significantly correlated with self-reported dietary restraint and to weight, shape, and eating concerns (Levinson & Rodebaugh, 2012). Furthermore, fear of negative evaluation is associated with the pursuit of thinness, even after controlling for depression, body mass index (BMI), and self-esteem (Gilbert & Meyer, 2005). Although the relation between fear of negative evaluation and dietary restraint has been established, the mechanism of this association remains unclear. One potential explanatory factor of this association may be appearance schematicity. Cash (2011) proposes that appearance schemas are cognitive generalisations about the importance and meaning of appearance in one's life. Appearance schematicity is expressed in the form of appearance investment, which encompasses the perceived importance, significance, and effects of appearance. According to Cash, Melnyk, & Hrabosky (2004), appearance investment consists of two components. Self-evaluative salience refers to the extent to which appearance is considered instrumental for self-definition and in life outcomes. Motivational salience refers to the engagement in behaviours designed to either maintain or enhance appearance, such as checking one's appearance in the mirror. Self-evaluative salience is considered more dysfunctional than is motivational salience. In contrast to motivational salience, it is associated with low self-esteem, body image negatively impacting important life domains such as social functioning (Cash et al., 2004), and with greater susceptibility to body dissatisfaction following exposure to the thin ideal (Ip & Jarry, 2008). Appearance investment may explain the association between fear of negative evaluation and dietary restraint as follows. First, given the current cultural context in which women's appearance is routinely judged (Herbozo & Thompson, 2006), it makes sense that women who fear others’ negative evaluation may fear negative appearance judgement, as documented by Lundgren, Anderson, & Thompson (2004). This fear may naturally increase their focus on the importance, centrality, and instrumentality of appearance, all of which are encompassed in self-evaluative salience. Thus far, one study documented a correlation between fear of negative appearance evaluation and self-evaluative salience (Boersma & Jarry, 2013), and one documented an association between fear of negative evaluation and self-evaluative salience in breast cancer patients (Moreira, Silva, & Canavarro, 2010). However, this latter association has not been demonstrated in other populations. In terms of motivational salience, fearing negative evaluation in the current cultural context may lead to increased engagement in appearance management behaviour, again with the goal of avoiding others’ negative judgement. Second, self-evaluative salience and motivational salience may be associated with dietary restraint as follows. Current cultural standards tend to equate women's beauty with thinness. Therefore, pursuing thinness through dietary restriction may be one expression of the importance of appearance to the self. Similarly, the tendency to attend to one's appearance for esthetic purposes may lead to dietary restraint as one of the many ways through which appearance can be managed and improved. These propositions are supported by the fact that both self-evaluative salience and motivation salience are associated with dietary restraint (Lamarche & Gammage, 2012). Finally, processing interpersonal cues through appearance schemas and engaging in appearance corrective behaviours may translate women's general anxiety of being negatively evaluated into dietary restriction. That is, appearance schemas may direct women to believe that dietary restriction will help them become thinner and therefore more consistent with cultural expectations for women's appearance, pre-empting future negative evaluations by others. The goal of this study was to explore this associative mechanism. Specifically, we hypothesized that fear of negative evaluation would have an indirect effect on dietary restraint through self-evaluative salience and motivational salience. We also expected self-evaluative salience to be a stronger mediator of this association than would be motivational salience because it is a more dysfunctional aspect of appearance investment (Cash et al., 2004). Thus, it is more likely to promote engagement in unhealthy behaviours such as dietary restraint. Furthermore, because BMI (Foster, Wadden, Swain, Stunkard, Platte, & Vogt, 1988), low self-esteem (Johnson & Wardle, 2005) and depressive symptoms (Spoor, Stice, Bekker, Van Strien, Croon, & Van Heck) are associated with dietary restraint, they were tested as covariates.