The Psychology of Eating: From Healthy to Disordered Behavior

Body Dissatisfaction 109

of girls with anorexia show greater body dissatisfaction than mothers of
nondisordered girls. Likewise, Steiger et al. (1994) found a direct corre-
spondence between mothers’ and daughters’ levels of weight concern, and
Hill, Weaver, and Blundell (1990) reported a link between mothers’ and
daughters’ degree of dietary restraint. Further, Cooley et al. (2008) reported
a correlation between a daughter’s eating pathology and the daughter’s
perception of her mother’s tendency to internalize media images. However,
research examining concordance between mothers and daughters has not
always produced consistent results. For example, Attie and Brooks-Gunn
(1989) reported that mothers’ levels of compulsive eating and body image
could not predict these factors in their daughters. Likewise, Ogden and
Elder (1998) reported discordance between mothers’ and daughters’ weight
concern in both Asian and white families.
Research exploring the role of social factors has therefore highlighted
a role for the media, culture, and the mother’s own body dissatisfaction.
However, there are some problems with the literature. First, some of the
evidence is contradictory and therefore straightforward conclusions are pro-
blematic. Second, even if there were a relationship between social factors and
body dissatisfaction, focusing on external sources such as the media or look-
ing for group differences (i.e., white vs. Asian, lower class vs. higher class,
or mother vs. daughter) doesn’t explain how these social influences result
in weight concern. Research has also looked for psychological explanations.

Psychological factors and body dissatisfaction

The research suggests that body dissatisfaction may be related to the
media. But are women and men just passively influenced by such external
sources of information? How does exposure to the media bring about
feelings of body dissatisfaction? The results also suggest a role for class,
ethnicity, and the family environment, but these relationships are not con-
sistent. Perhaps looking for group differences hides the effect of other
psychological causes. From this perspective, ethnicity may relate to body
dissatisfaction, but only when ethnicity is accompanied by a particular set
of beliefs. Similarly, it may not be class per se which is important, but whether
class reflects the way an individual thinks. Further, a mother’s body dis-
satisfaction may only be important if it occurs within a particular kind of
relationship. Research has explored the role of beliefs, the mother–daughter
relationship, and the central role of control as a means to explain how social
influences are translated into body dissatisfaction.