Neuroscience
Have you ever caught yourself staring at sumptuously-formed cake, only to come away with the guilty feeling that the mere act of looking has led you to put on weight? If so, you're not alone.
Following research showing that people with eating disorders are prone to these irrational thoughts, Jennifer Coelho and colleagues have now confirmed that people without an eating disorder experience them too, though to a lesser extent.
However, that was not the aim of their research. Coelho's group conducted this study because at least one expert has suggested that people with eating disorders displace their emotional problems onto their bodies, thereby experiencing increased fatness when they're distressed. To test this, Coelho's team investigated whether for people with eating disorders, it is specifically thinking about food that can lead to guilty feelings about weight gain, or if anxiety in general can have the same effect.
The researchers asked women with eating disorders and female university students without an eating disorder, to imagine eating a naughty food. As a control, other women with eating disorders and other female university students imagined giving a public presentation.
Imagining eating large quantities of a naughty food led the eating disordered participants, and to a lesser extent the university students, to experience guilt and feelings of weight gain. By contrast, the participants who imagined giving a public presentation did not report these feelings, thus undermining the idea that for people with an eating disorder, it is any kind of anxiety that leads to guilt and a sense of weight gain.
A further, counter-intuitive finding was that a subgroup of the university students - those who reported restricting what they ate - actually did not experience guilt or feelings of weight gain after imagining a naughty food. The researchers said this could be because this group deliberately suppress their food-related thoughts.
The researchers concluded that future research should examine whether it is beneficial for treatment approaches to target the kinds of irrational thoughts examined in this study, or if instead such thoughts will reduce naturally as people recover from their eating disorders.
_________________________________
COELHO, J. (2008). "Just looking at food makes me gain weight": Experimental induction of thought-shape fusion in eating-disordered and non-eating-disordered women. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 46(2), 219-228. DOI: 10.1016/j.brat.2007.11.004
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
"Just looking at a cake makes me feel fatter"
Have you ever caught yourself staring at sumptuously-formed cake, only to come away with the guilty feeling that the mere act of looking has led you to put on weight? If so, you're not alone.Following research showing that people with eating disorders are prone to these irrational thoughts, Jennifer Coelho and colleagues have now confirmed that people without an eating disorder experience them too, though to a lesser extent.
However, that was not the aim of their research. Coelho's group conducted this study because at least one expert has suggested that people with eating disorders displace their emotional problems onto their bodies, thereby experiencing increased fatness when they're distressed. To test this, Coelho's team investigated whether for people with eating disorders, it is specifically thinking about food that can lead to guilty feelings about weight gain, or if anxiety in general can have the same effect.
The researchers asked women with eating disorders and female university students without an eating disorder, to imagine eating a naughty food. As a control, other women with eating disorders and other female university students imagined giving a public presentation.
Imagining eating large quantities of a naughty food led the eating disordered participants, and to a lesser extent the university students, to experience guilt and feelings of weight gain. By contrast, the participants who imagined giving a public presentation did not report these feelings, thus undermining the idea that for people with an eating disorder, it is any kind of anxiety that leads to guilt and a sense of weight gain.
A further, counter-intuitive finding was that a subgroup of the university students - those who reported restricting what they ate - actually did not experience guilt or feelings of weight gain after imagining a naughty food. The researchers said this could be because this group deliberately suppress their food-related thoughts.
The researchers concluded that future research should examine whether it is beneficial for treatment approaches to target the kinds of irrational thoughts examined in this study, or if instead such thoughts will reduce naturally as people recover from their eating disorders.
_________________________________
COELHO, J. (2008). "Just looking at food makes me gain weight": Experimental induction of thought-shape fusion in eating-disordered and non-eating-disordered women. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 46(2), 219-228. DOI: 10.1016/j.brat.2007.11.004
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Is Eating More Slowly The Key To Eating Less?
Barely a day goes by that we aren't reminded of the pending obesity crisis that is set to befall the Western World. Some experts have suggested that learning to eat more slowly might help us to eat less. Doing so leads to the subjective feeling that...
- The Special Issue Spotter
Emotion and disorders of emotion (Nature Neuroscience). Sociologies of problem gambling (American Behavioural Scientist). Personality and personal relationship processes (Journal of Social and Personal Relationships). Making instructional cartoons...
- Body Image - It's 'healthy' People Who Are Deluded
We’re all going to die and there’s nothing we can do about it. Depressing? Well, it’s been argued that depressed people are the sane ones because they see the world for how it really is. Now consider this – a study has found people with eating...
- Do You Remember That Time Strawberry Ice Cream Made You Sick?
Here’s a dieting technique you may not have come across before. Psychologists at the University of Washington misled people into believing they had been made ill by strawberry ice cream as a child, thus leaving them less willing to eat strawberry ice...
- Nineteenth Annual Cognitive Neuroscience Society Meeting
The 2012 CNS Meeting will be held in Chicago from March 31 to April 3. The schedule is packed with three and a half days of symposia, slide sessions, posters, and distinguished lectures. It will be quite an Event, with sessions on Music and the Brain,...