حالت های مرتبط خویشتن واقعی و خویشتن آرمانی، اختلافات و شرم، گناه، و غرور: بررسی ارتباط در مدل فرایند احساسات و عواطف خودآگاهی

The aim of this study was to examine the associations between women's actual:ideal weight-related self-discrepancies and experiences of weight-related shame, guilt, and authentic pride using self-discrepancy (Higgins, 1987) and self-conscious emotion (Tracy & Robins, 2004) theories as guiding frameworks. Participants (N = 398) completed self-report questionnaires. Main analyses involved polynomial regressions, followed by the computation and evaluation of response surface values. Actual and ideal weight self-states were related to shame (R2 = .35), guilt (R2 = .25), and authentic pride (R2 = .08). When the discrepancy between actual and ideal weights increased, shame and guilt also increased, while authentic pride decreased. Findings provide partial support for self-discrepancy theory and the process model of self-conscious emotions. Experiencing weight-related self-discrepancies may be important cognitive appraisals related to shame, guilt, and authentic pride. Further research is needed exploring the relations between self-discrepancies and a range of weight-related self-conscious emotions.

Over 70% of older adolescent girls and 80% of adult women are dissatisfied with their body weight (Dohnt and Tiggemann, 2005 and Neighbors and Sobal, 2007). While the thin ideal continues to be strongly promoted through the mass media and cultural discourse, the prevalence of overweight and obesity has increased steadily (Ogden, Carroll, Curtin, McDowell, Tabak, & Flegal, 2006), displacing the average women's body weight further away from the already unattainable ideal. Discrepancies between actual and ideal weight standards (Thompson & van den Berg, 2002) can drive negative body image perceptions (Frederick et al., 2006, Stice and Shaw, 2002, Swami and Tovée, 2009 and Szymanski and Cash, 1995). These discrepancies can also have important implications for the development of a range of maladaptive behaviors and emotions such as decreased self-esteem, happiness and increased disordered eating, depressive symptoms, body-related shame (e.g., Bessenoff and Snow, 2006, Paxton et al., 2006, Stice and Shaw, 2002 and Swami et al., 2010). While informative, the majority of extant weight-related self-discrepancy research has not been theoretically based and has limited practical implications. Conducting theoretically grounded research may help inform interventions aimed at promoting mental and physical health among women. This study attempts to fill this gap.

Missing data was 3.9% or less for any one variable and mean substitution was used to replace missing values (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007). The distributional properties of all variables suggested that the assumptions of normality, linearity, and homoscedasticity were satisfied (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007). Descriptive statistics are presented in Table 1. Based on established effect size classifications (Cohen, 1988), Pearson bivariate correlations revealed that actual BMI was highly and positively related to ideal BMI and weight-related shame, moderately and positively related to guilt, and weakly and negatively associated with authentic pride. Ideal BMI demonstrated a moderate positive association with shame and a weak positive relationship to guilt. Weight-related shame and guilt were highly and positively correlated. Shame and guilt were both moderately and negatively correlated with authentic pride (see Table 1).