The relationship between attentional bias and body image disturbance

Body image disturbance is a both a risk factor for, and a symptom of, many eating disorders and refers to the misperception of and dissatisfaction with one’s own body. Some studies show that women with high body dissatisfaction direct more attention to low weight bodies. This attentional bias can result in the overestimation of body size via body size adaptation—a temporary perceptual shift experienced after exposure to extreme stimuli. Therefore, attention may have a causal role in body image disturbance. In this thesis, I test the effects of attentional bias to bodies of different sizes on body size adaptation and body dissatisfaction using a training dot probe task (Chapter 2) and a training visual search task (Chapter 5). I test the association between body dissatisfaction and attentional bias to low weight bodies using an assessment version of the dot probe task (Chapter 3), a systematic review and meta-analysis (Chapter 4) that synthesises the results of Chapters 2 and 3 with 30 additional eligible studies, and an assessment version of the Attentional Response to Distal vs. Proximal Emotional Information (ARDPEI) task (Chapter 6). From this research, I conclude that gaze tracking studies do provide evidence for a positive association between body dissatisfaction and attentional bias to low weight bodies in women. Women with high (compared to low) body dissatisfaction direct more gaze towards low weight female body stimuli. However, reaction time measures do not provide evidence for this association and instead demonstrate poor reliability as measures of individual differences in attention. This thesis does not provide strong evidence for an effect of attentional bias to bodies of different sizes on body size adaptation or body dissatisfaction; however, given attention was measured using reaction times, future research using gaze tracking should be conducted to further explore the effect of attentional bias to bodies of different sizes on body size adaptation or body dissatisfaction