Introduction
Various psychosocial variables may affect the strength of the relationship between body image dissatisfaction and women's eating disorder symptomatology.
Objective
Informed by Tylka (2004) and Brannan and Petrie (2011) research, the current study examined body surveillance and self-esteem as well as three additional theoretically relevant variables (social interaction anxiety, internalization of media ideals and attachment anxiety) as potential moderators of this relationship.
Method
A cross-sectional design was used. A sample of 538 young Italian women completed self-report questionnaires.
Results
Hierarchical moderated regression indicated that self-esteem buffered the deleterious effects of body dissatisfaction, whereas social interaction anxiety, body surveillance, internalization of media ideals and attachment anxiety intensified the primary body dissatisfaction-eating disorder symptomatology relationship.
Conclusion
Several risk and protective factors were found to interact with body dissatisfaction to influence its relation to women's eating disorder symptomatology. Practical implications and directions for future research are discussed.
Although the number of young women meeting criteria for full threshold anorexia and bulimia nervosa is relatively small (American Psychiatric Association, 2000 and Hudson et al., 2007), there remains a large and increasing number of undergraduate females who report engaging in deleterious weight and body shape control behaviours (i.e., dietary restraint, use of diet pills, fasting and compulsive exercise) to reduce body fat and become thinner (Dakanalis et al., 2012c, Forman-Hoffman, 2004, Hoyt and Ross, 2003, Riva et al., 2013, Striegel-Moore et al., 2009 and Tylka and Subich, 2002).
Virtually all multivariate conceptualizations of eating disorders (including the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders criteria; American Psychiatric Association, 1994 and American Psychiatric Association, 2000) make reference to body image dissatisfaction (Fairburn and Cooper, 2011 and Polivy and Herman, 2002) which, according to etiological models of eating psychopathology and meta-analytic data, is recognised as the most robust causal risk factor for women's clinical and subclinical eating disorders (Fairburn et al., 2003, Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997, Riva, 2011, Shroff and Thompson, 2006, Stice, 2001, Stice, 2002 and Stice and Shaw, 2002). Yet it has also been documented that the prevalence of female body image concern has dramatically increased over the past three decades (Feingold and Mazzella, 1998, Garner, 1997 and Silberstein et al., 1988), to the extent that women's dissatisfaction with body size, weight and shape has been aptly described as “normative” (Tiggemann, 2004).
