Experimental evidence that changes in mood cause changes in body dissatisfaction among undergraduate women☆
Highlights
► We examined the causal relationship between negative mood and body dissatisfaction. ► We randomly assigned participants to either a negative mood or a neutral mood induction procedure. ► Negative mood induction caused increased body dissatisfaction. ► Findings support negative mood as a causal risk factor for body dissatisfaction.
Introduction
Negative affect is a prospective risk factor for the development of eating disorders (Stice, 2002). Further, acute increases in negative affect appear to be a trigger for binge eating among women with bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder (Haedt-Matt & Keel, 2011). Thus, negative mood has both distal and proximal significance in disordered eating. Similarly, body dissatisfaction predicts the development of a variety of negative consequences, particularly eating pathology (Johnson and Wardle, 2005, Stice, 2002). However, little is known about the causal relationship between these two risk factors. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of negative mood on body dissatisfaction.
Body dissatisfaction and negative mood consistently show positive associations in clinical (e.g., Dunkley, Masheb, & Grilo, 2010) and non-clinical samples of women (e.g., Johnson and Wardle, 2005, Santos et al., 2007). Although a large body of research suggests that body dissatisfaction contributes to negative mood, depression also has been supported as a prospective risk and maintenance factor for body dissatisfaction in longitudinal studies (Bearman et al., 2006, Keel et al., 2001). Thus, some researchers have proposed a model in which negative mood increases body dissatisfaction (Griffiths and McCabe, 2000, Keel et al., 2001, Tylka and Subich, 2004). Keel et al. (2001) theorized that depression may cause body dissatisfaction because general negative feelings are funneled into negative feelings about body shape and weight in cultures that idealize thinness. Expanding on earlier theoretical models, Tylka and Subich (2004) posited that negative affect contributes to body image disturbance because women who experience negative affect are more likely to internalize the thin ideal and generalize negative feelings toward their bodies. Supporting these proposals, research has found that negative affect and self-esteem are unique predictors of variance in body image (Griffiths and McCabe, 2000, Tylka and Subich, 2004). If negative mood increases body dissatisfaction, we would expect changes in negative mood to precede changes in body dissatisfaction. However, correlational and longitudinal findings cannot establish whether acute changes in mood cause acute changes in body dissatisfaction.
Previous research has used experimental methods to successfully manipulate mood and body satisfaction in non-clinical samples of women. Negative mood inductions led to increases in body dissatisfaction in some (Baker et al., 1995, Cohen-Tovée, 1993, Taylor and Cooper, 1992) but not all studies (Carter, Bulik, Lawson, Sullivan, & Wilson, 1996). Conflicting results may be due to limitations of this literature, including small sample size (N = 15; Carter et al., 1996), no control condition for comparison (Cohen-Tovée, 1993), and lack of an immediate pre-induction assessment of mood and body dissatisfaction (Baker et al., 1995). Thus, methodological limitations constrain the conclusions that can be drawn from existing experimental studies. The present study sought to examine causal relationships between mood and body dissatisfaction in a non-clinical sample utilizing a controlled experimental design with repeated assessments to evaluate changes in mood and body dissatisfaction as a consequence of negative mood induction procedures. We hypothesized that experimentally induced increases in negative mood would cause increases in body dissatisfaction.
Section snippets
Participants
Participants were 45 female undergraduates recruited through campus advertisements. Eligible participants were between 18 and 25 years old, had a body mass index (BMI) in the normal range (19–24 kg/m2), and reported no prior or current eating disorder during a screening interview that covered lifetime history of eating disorder symptoms. Mean (SD) age and BMI were 20.03 (1.78) years and 21.68 (1.71) kg/m2, respectively. The sample was predominantly Caucasian (90.5%). Participants were paid $10
Procedure
Participants were told that the purpose of this study was to investigate body image. After providing informed consent, participants were randomly assigned by a coin toss into either the experimental (n = 21) or control condition (n = 24).
Similar to methods successfully implemented by Cohen-Tovée (1993), the current study used Clark's (1983) musical mood induction method to induce a temporary increase in negative affect in the experimental group and no mood change in the control group. After
Results
There were no differences between experimental and control participants on demographic characteristics or baseline measures of global eating pathology, body dissatisfaction, or depression (see Table 1), supporting the success of randomization.
Discussion
We employed a rigorous experimental design to examine causal relationships between mood and body dissatisfaction. A negative mood induction caused increased negative mood and increased body dissatisfaction, providing strong support for a causal model in which depressed mood contributes to body dissatisfaction. All participants were in a healthy weight range and, therefore, had no objective reason to experience body dissatisfaction during this study. In cultures which idealize thinness, body
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This work was supported by grants F31 MH085456 (PI: Alissa Haedt-Matt) and R01 MH63758 (PI: Pamela Keel) from the National Institute of Mental Health. Portions of this research were presented at the 2007 International Conference on Eating Disorders in Baltimore, MD and the 21st Annual Meeting for the Society for Research in Psychopathology in Iowa City, IA. The authors would like to acknowledge Yvonne Garcia, Julie Gravener, Brooke Palmer, Erin Valenti, and Andrea Volfova for their assistance with data collection and data entry.