Eating disorders correlate with a person's mental ability to positively handle even miniscule unpleasant situations. This ability is known as psychological flexibility: the admittance of undesirable feelings is recognized while a person simultaneously follows their personal values and beliefs. Psychological flexibility is studied to compare thoughts of eating-disorders/body image, to overall psychological health. College students, in particular, encounter stressful situations and social pressure, and often become the focus of these studies. The article, “Disordered Eating-Related Cognition and Psychological Flexibility” (by Masuda, Price, Anderson, and Wendell), shows the relationship between negative body image thoughts, psychological flexibility and psychological ill-health among college students.
This article stems from the online Behavior Modification site regarding psychology topics. Behavioral psychology suggests that all behaviors are learned. One of the most well-known and influential scientists that studied this kind of psychology was B.F. Skinner (1904-1990). His research focused on operant conditioning, the idea that organisms (college students in this case) perform actions based on the environment around them. This article suggests that the drive to be thin emerges from today’s society. The magazines with big, bright titles such as, “Get you best beach bod” and “How to lose 10 pounds fast” consume newsstands everywhere. It’s no wonder that young adults long to look like their favorite celebrities that are famous because of their ‘good’ bodies. Skinner would say the act of not eating (or eating in an unhealthy way) in order to lose weight to ‘fit in’ is an effect of operant conditioning. Girls want to be skinny because they see how thin women are accepted and flaunted in current Western society. This trend is harmful to today’s youth and the study by Masuda, Price, Anderson, and Wendell focus on other factors (psychological flexibility and mental health) along with disordered eating cognition, that are affecting college students today.
Many studies show that disordered eating-related cognition is positively associated with negative psychological outcomes. So when a person has increased thoughts and puts pressure on himself or herself to lose weight in order to fit into society, they are more likely to experience depression and anxiety. However, although disordered eating-related thoughts are a decent predictor to a person’s psychological distress, it does not always yield negative psychological health. This study by Masuda and others takes into account how a person responds to negative events (flexibility) and observes its effects. Again, psychological flexibility, as summarized in the article, is “an overall behavior pattern of experiencing private events without trying to judge, evaluate, avoid, fix, down-regulate, or change them, while spontaneously engaging in value-directed activities at the same time”. Hence, a person who is psychologically flexible can be exposed to negative thoughts/feelings (like wanting to be thin) without being completely enthralled with the negativity. Being in college, we all know the pressures that students encounter. Being in a sorority, especially, I see girls that are constantly struggling with their body image. It is so important to reassure these girls that they are beautiful and help them not let society’s standards negatively affect them. But if you know someone who obviously needs more relief than you can give them, the best thing you can do is get them professional help (but I’m sure you all already knew that).
New evidence suggests that psychological flexibility is inversely associated with detrimental psychological problems. So if someone is very psychologically flexible, he/she usually has minimal negative psychological effects/problems. The authors’ main goal when administering this study was to determine if/how a “psychologically flexible response style contributes to the link between disordered eating-related cognitions and poor psychological outcomes”. 375 participants from a large public university in Georgia were asked a variety of questions and answered anonymously. The question’s topics included: eating disorders/self-esteem, willingness to accept unpleasant thoughts, overall psychological health (including common behavior stressors), and personal anxiety.
Previous studies that were similar to the current one, suggested that gender is a significant predictor when dealing with disordered variables. However, gender was excluded in the results of this study because it did not appear to be a compelling factor of the participants’ psychological outcomes. I originally expected eating-disordered cognitions to be significantly more prevalent in college females, but to my surprise, the difference in gender and outcomes did not show any variance. The study insinuates that in order to understand how negative psychological events are maintained, it would be beneficial to not only assess disordered eating-related cognitions, but also understand how a person reacts to difficult or undesirable situations. I found this study interesting because self-image and body issues are obviously ongoing in society today, especially among young adults. Disordered eating-related cognitions and poor psychological outcomes are positively related to each other, while psychological flexibility is inversely related to the two and should be taken into account when studying people’s psychological ill-health.
No comments:
Post a Comment