Body image disturbance is a precursor to eating disorders, which in turn afflict approximately 4% of the population of the United States. Though numerous attempts have been made to delineate the emotions experienced by individuals with body image disturbance, existing research is largely observational descriptive, and self-reported. Combining psychophysiological and self-report measures will permit a more direct and comprehensive account of the multidimensional nature of emotion among individuals with body image disturbance. In the context of the biphasic theory of emotion, the overall objection of the proposed research will be to assess and compare the emotional reactivity of males and females who are symptomatic (body image disturbed) and asymptomatic (not body image disturbed) for eating disorders. How attentional biases and emotional reactivity differ among these groups, while viewing pictures of themselves as well as individuals with societal ideal bodies, will be determined. Psychophysiological measures known to index emotional reactivity among clinical and subclinical will be collected using a startle prove in the context of a picture-viewing paradigm, and are expected to reliably differentiate symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals. As indexed by eye movements, symptomatic individuals are predicted to attend more to somatic regions of body dissatisfaction than will asymptomatic individuals when viewing themselves, but will avoid these areas when viewing others. They are also expected to exhibit greater potentiation of the reflexive eyeblink in response to the startle probe as compared to asymptomatic individuals when viewing physique pictures of themselves and others. Also, the P3 wave of the cortical event-related potential to the startle probe will be smaller in amplitude to physique pictures of themselves and others for the symptomatic as compared to the asymptomatic individuals. Finally, symptomatic participants will report more emotional and mood disturbance while viewing pictures of themselves and aesthetically ideal bodies compared to the asymptomatic participants. Findings obtained from this investigation will permit researchers and clinicians a greater understanding of how commonly encountered environmental stimuli are differentially attended to, processed, and responded to among individuals with body image disturbance; thus leading to the development and refinement of effective interventions to alleviate the negative emotional responses that preclude and perpetuate eating disorders.
