Body Mass Index and Nationality (Argentine vs. Spanish) Moderate the Relationship Between Internalization of the Thin Ideal and Body Dissatisfaction: A Conditional Mediation Model. It is believed that Women’s exposure to Western sociocultural pressures to attain a “thin-ideal” results in the internalization of a desire to be thin that consequently leads to body dissatisfaction (BD). It is also well documented that body mass index (BMI; kg/m2) correlates with BD. We tested for the first time a conditional mediation model where thin-ideal Awareness predicted BD through Internalization of the thin ideal and the path from Internalization to BD was hypothesized to be moderated by BMI and Nationality (Argentine vs. Spanish). The model was tested with a sample of 499 young women (age = 18 to 29) from Argentina (n = 290) and Spain (n = 209). Awareness and internalization were measured with the SATAQ-4 (Schaefer et al., 2015) and BD was measured with the BSQ (Cooper et al., 1987). The model was analyzed using PROCESS v3.1 (Hayes, 2018). As hypothesized, thin-ideal awareness predicted BD through internalization and the path from internalization to BD was moderated by BMI and nationality. Specifically, internalization predicted BD at all level of BMI and in both samples, but the relationship between internalization and BD increased with BMI and was also stronger among Spaniards than Argentines. We argue that the findings are congruent with theories that predict that economic development and modernization contribute to normative female BD through internalization of the thin ideal and that upward social comparisons or cognitive discrepancy between self-perceived body image and the sociocultural thin ideal interacts synergistically with thin-ideal internalization to increase BD.
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APA Citation:
Moreno-Domínguez, S., Rutsztein, G., Geist, T. A., Pomichter, E. E., & Cepeda-Benito, A. (2019). Body Mass Index and Nationality (Argentine vs. Spanish) Moderate the Relationship Between Internalization of the Thin Ideal and Body Dissatisfaction: A Conditional Mediation Model. Frontiers in Psychology, 10. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00582
With colleagues from the Universidad de Granada and the Universidad de Jaen (both in Spain), We continue to investigate body image, food cravings, and eating disorder symptoms in women. Currently we are co-editing a special issue in Frontiers of Psychology with a former student and current colleague of Dr. Cepeda-Benito, Dr. Silvia Moreno-Dominguez. The title of the topic is Beyond Eating and Body Image Disturbances: Cultural, Transcultural and Accultural Perspectives and the submission of manuscripts is encouraged and welcome.
We’ve become interested in “placebo” effects and are currently jump starting a research program to test and compare “blind placebo” and “honest placebo” effects. In a nutshell, there is good evidence that placebo treatments help even when individuals understand what a placebo is and know they are receiving the placebo rather than the experimental treatment. This line of research currently fits within the area of food cravings for we are currently collecting data to test whether a placebo pill administered without deception can curve down food cravings in volunteers agreeing to fast for 12 hours.