Examining the Association Between Self-Esteem and Perfectionism Across Black and White College Women to Predict Bulimic Symptoms

Objective: Self-esteem and perfectionism are two key risk factors for eating disorder symptoms, where lower levels of self-esteem are associated with greater eating pathology and higher levels of perfectionism are predictive of disordered eating. However, these findings emerge from samples of predominantly White females. Evidence has shown that self-esteem and perfectionism may differ across racial groups. Therefore, the goal of this study was to evaluate the associations between self-esteem and perfectionism on bulimic symptoms among Black and White female college students across a five-month period. Method: Participants (N=226) were 156 self-identifying White and 70 self-identifying Black female college students who completed questionnaires investigating self-esteem, maladaptive perfectionism, and bulimic symptoms at baseline and again five months later. Results: Fisher’s r to z correlations revealed that T1 self-esteem was significantly more negatively associated with T2 bulimic symptoms among Black women compared to White women. In contrast, the bivariate relationship between perfectionism and bulimic symptoms did not differ significantly across the two groups. The three-way interaction between self-esteem, perfectionism, and race was not associated with bulimic symptoms, although there was a trend toward significance. Evaluations of separate two-way interactions between self-esteem and race, and between perfectionism and race, indicated neither model significantly predicted bulimic symptoms across time. Discussion: These findings suggest that self-esteem has a stronger negative relationship for bulimic symptoms among Black women. However, after controlling for baseline bulimic symptoms, self-esteem does not differently predict changes in bulimic symptoms for Black and White women. There was no significant difference regarding the relationships between perfectionism and bulimic symptoms among Black and White women. Clinicians should avoid making generalizations about race and eating disorder symptoms, or relationships with eating disorder symptoms, and researchers should continue to test hypotheses about risk factors for eating disorders in racially diverse samples.Bachelor of Art