Eating disorders are very dangerous and debilitating conditions that detrimentally affect a person’s physical and mental health. There are several different types of eating disorders but the most prevalent are anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder. Anorexia is when a person is severely underweight and has an intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat. Bulimia involves reoccurring episodes of binge eating followed by behaviors such as self-induced vomiting or excessive exercising in order to avoid gaining weight. Binge eating is when a person will eat a large amount of food in a specific time period. Unlike bulimia, binge eating is not followed by compensatory behaviors. Eating disorders are serious illnesses that any person can suffer from during their life. There are several social psychological concepts that can contribute to a person’s formation of an eating disorder which include self-esteem, social comparison, and self-discrepancy.
Self-Esteem
Self-esteem is the confidence in one’s own worth or abilities and is molded by those who are important to us, the way we perceive how others think of us, our successes and failures, and the response in domains that are important to us. It is an evaluation of the self and one of the most important attitudes we hold.
A way self-esteem can contribute to the formation of an eating disorder is when body image is distorted by those who are close to us. If a little girl grows up in a wealthy family whose main focus is on the family image and reputation, then there are many factors that can lead to her developing low self-esteem which can then manifest into an eating disorder. Ever since she was young she has been told that she needed to be perfect. Whenever she would “mess up” such as getting a B instead of an A or eating a sugary food such as ice-cream, her mother would punish her for doing something that could affect their ideal, perfect status. This could lead her to feel negatively about her body which could lower self-esteem and increase anxiety. She could develop an eating disorder such as anorexia or bulimia to ensure that she stays at her mother’s ideal body weight. By being perfect for her mother and receiving praise for her body, the girl’s eating disorder could be reinforced as something that is necessary in order for her to be perfect and worthy of her mother’s love.
The effect that those close to us have on our self-esteem can negatively affect how we view ourselves and could cause people to develop eating disorders in order to maintain those perfect images and feel worthy in the eyes of their loved ones.
Social Comparison
Social comparison is another concept that can be distorted and cause the development of eating disorders. This theory includes “any process in which individuals relate their own characteristics to those of others” (Buunk & Gibbons, 2000, p. 491). People with a high social comparison orientation (SCO) are more likely to compare themselves to others, spend more time making comparisons, experience more feelings from these comparisons, and are more likely to base their personal risk perceptions on these comparisons (Maddux & Tangney, 2010, p. 197). It seems likely that eating disorders and high SCO are related.
People who have high SCO are consistently comparing themselves to those around them especially on social media. After comparing oneself to a highly attractive individual of the same sex, a person experiences a decrease in self-rated attractiveness and an increase in negative affect (Maddux & Tangney, 2010, p. 197). This can lead to feelings of dissatisfaction with one’s own body which could then lead to the development of an eating disorder if the individual feels as though they will never be beautiful unless they have a body that is similar to the person they were comparing themselves to. An example of this would be the Victoria Secret Fashion Show. If a girl watches this show and starts to compare herself to the models she may realize that she looks nothing like them. This could lead to an increase in body dissatisfaction and make her feel as though she will never be considered beautiful by others unless she looks like these models.
These beliefs could then cause her to develop an eating disorder such as anorexia in order to become as thin and therefore as beautiful as the models. Social comparison can be beneficial in small doses because it can help people boost self-esteem and promote self-improvement, however when taken to the extreme social comparison can cause an increase in a person’s body dissatisfaction and can lead to the formation of eating disorders.
Self-Discrepancy
One more concept that can contribute to the formation of eating disorders is self-discrepancy. It is believed that people can experience discrepancies between their actual self and either the ideal self (who they want to be) or the ought self (who they think they should be). Discrepancies between the actual and ideal selves can create feelings of dejection such as sadness and disappointment while differences between the actual and ought selves can lead to agitated emotions such as anxiety, worry, and guilt.
An AI discrepancy can lead to bulimia while an AO discrepancy can cause anorexia. People who are anorexic are afraid of gaining weight and being considered fat. The thought of being fat can cause them to become extremely anxious and worried which prompts them to restrict the number of calories they eat in order to maintain their “perfect” weight. On the other hand, those who are bulimic believe that they will be rewarded for being thin and that being thin is who they truly want to be. When they experience episodes of binge eating they afterward feel sad and disappointed about not staying true to their ideal self, so they engage in purging behaviors until they feel as though they have reversed the effects of their actions.
Differences between a person’s actual, ideal, and ought selves can lead to the development of eating disorders because it can trigger self-regulating behaviors that can have negative effects on the person’s physical health as it can lead them to engage in behaviors such as restricting calories, extreme vomiting, and an unnecessary use of laxatives.
References
Buunk, B., & Gibbons, F. (2000). Toward an Enlightenment in Social Comparison Theory. In Handbook of Social Comparison (pp. 487-499). Boston, MA: Springer. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4237-7
Maddux, J. E., & Tangney, J. P. (Eds.). (2010). Social psychological foundations of clinical psychology. New York, NY: Guilford Press.