Attentional engagement with and disengagement from appearance ideals: Differential associations with body dissatisfaction frequency and duration?

Laura Dondzilo; Rachel F Rodgers; Matthew Fuller-Tyszkiewicz; Lenny R Vartanian; Isabel Krug; David A Preece; Jasmine MacLeod; Colin MacLeod

doi:10.1016/j.bodyim.2024.101680

Attentional engagement with and disengagement from appearance ideals: Differential associations with body dissatisfaction frequency and duration?

Body Image. 2024 Mar:48:101680. doi: 10.1016/j.bodyim.2024.101680. Epub 2024 Jan 31.

Authors

Laura Dondzilo¹, Rachel F Rodgers², Matthew Fuller-Tyszkiewicz³, Lenny R Vartanian⁴, Isabel Krug⁵, David A Preece⁶, Jasmine MacLeod⁷, Colin MacLeod⁷

Affiliations

¹ Elizabeth Rutherford Memorial Centre for the Advancement of Research on Emotion, School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia. Electronic address: laura.dondzilo@uwa.edu.au.
² APPEAR, Department of Applied Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, United States; Department of Psychiatric Emergency & Acute Care, Lapeyronie Hospital, CHRU Montpellier, France.
³ School of Psychology, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia; Center for Social and Early Emotional Development, Deakin University, Burwood, Australia.
⁴ School of Psychology, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
⁵ Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
⁶ School of Population Health, Curtin University, Perth, Australia; Curtin enAble Institute, Curtin University, Perth, Australia; School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia.
⁷ Elizabeth Rutherford Memorial Centre for the Advancement of Research on Emotion, School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia.

PMID: 38301330
DOI: 10.1016/j.bodyim.2024.101680

Abstract

Recent work has served to dissociate two dimensions of trait body dissatisfaction: body dissatisfaction frequency and body dissatisfaction duration. The present study sought to evaluate whether body dissatisfaction frequency and body dissatisfaction duration are each associated with distinct patterns of appearance-related cognitive processing. It was hypothesized that speeded attentional engagement with idealized bodies is associated with higher frequency of body dissatisfaction episodes, while slowed attentional disengagement from such information may instead be associated with higher duration of body dissatisfaction episodes. Participants (238 women, 149 men) completed an attentional task capable of independently assessing attentional engagement with, and attentional disengagement from, idealized bodies. Participants also completed both trait and in vivo (i.e., ecological momentary assessment) measures of body dissatisfaction frequency and duration. Results showed that neither engagement nor disengagement bias index scores predicted variance in either body dissatisfaction frequency measures or body dissatisfaction duration measures. Findings suggest that either biased attentional engagement with, and disengagement from, idealized bodies do not associate with the frequency and duration of body dissatisfaction episodes, or there are other key moderating factors involved in the expression of body dissatisfaction-linked attentional bias.

Keywords: Attentional bias; Attentional disengagement; Attentional engagement; Body dissatisfaction; Ecological momentary assessment.

MeSH terms

Attention
Attentional Bias*
Body Dissatisfaction*
Body Image / psychology
Cues
Female
Humans
Male