Anorexia and Bulimia
The cognitive explanation of Anorexia nervosa states that the
disorder is a result of defective and maladaptive thought
process about the self, the body and food/eating.
The faulty thinking process can be down to either distortions
or errors in thinking.
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Examples of distortions include :
Misconceptions of the body – being overweight when in fact
it is underweight
 Basing feelings on self appearance
Making flawed beliefs about eating and dieting behaviour
Examples of errors in thinking are:
Polarized thinking – e.g. “I ate one slice of chocolate cake …
I ruined all my hard work
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Magical Thinking – My life would be perfect if I was size 8
Overgeneralising- If I can’t control my diet I ‘am going to
fail in life as a whole
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Fallon and Rozin (1985) showed male and female
students a series of body silhouette pictures of
increasing size and asked them to rate:
 Their current body shape ‘current’
 Their ideal body shape ‘ideal’
The body shape that the other sex would find most
attractive (‘other-attractive’)
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The results of the test found that :
 Men rated ‘current’ and ‘ideal’ very closely
 Men rated ‘other attractiveness’ as smaller than
‘current’ and ‘ideal’
 Women rated ‘other attractiveness’ as significantly
smaller than ‘current’ and ‘ideal’
Women rated ‘ideal’ as smaller that ‘current’ and ‘other
attractive’
This study suggests that both men and woman believe
that others would find them more attractive if they were
thinner and woman would ideally would want to be
thinner.
McKenzie et al (1993) interviewed female eating disorder
patients and a control group about their body weight, shape
and ideals, and got them to estimate their own size in
relation to other women. They found that:
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When asked to compare themselves with the control group
who were the same size the eating disorder patients tend
to overestimate their own body weight
When they were asked their ideal bodyweight/shape, ED
patients chose a weight/shape significantly
lighter/thinner that the control group
Following a sugary snack, they judged their body size to
have increased. Controls did not.
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Women are generally more dissatisfied than men with
their bodies
ED patients misperceive their own bodies and have more
unrealistic body ideals
In ED patients, minor events related to eating cause a fear
of weight gain
However the explanation does not prove what causes ED
The cognitive explanations states the obvious, in this case
people who suffer with anorexia see themselves as
overweight when they are under weight
People who are clinically ‘normal’ also think irrationally so what's the difference between ‘normal’ people who
think irrationally and sufferers of anorexia?
However both studies have their own critics when analysing
eating disorders :
Fallon and Rozin only used students who didn’t have an
eating disorder which means its not representative.
 McKenzie only used female participants making it gender
biased
 The topic can be socially sensitive to the participants which
may influence their mind-set when taking part in the
research (particularly in McKenzie's research were they
had to eat a chocolate bar)
 However due to their controlled environments both studies
possess high reliability
 And both studies could lead to a solution in dealing with
patients with Anorexia
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There are three parts to the cognitive approach to bulimia:
 Developmental factors – Cooper et al (2004) believed that
sufferers of bulimia had experience trauma and as a result
see themselves as outcasts in contrast to everyone else so
they diet to become thin to be more acceptable to those
around them
 Maintenance- Cooper describes as the ‘vicious cycle’.
Bulimia sufferers seek happiness by binge eating and
then purge due to their guilt making them feel worse.
Then they repeat the cycle to binge to restart their
happiness.
 Functional - Polivy et al. (1994) suggested binge eating
was a way to cope with identity problems
Bowlby's (1969,1973,1980) attachment theory investigates
the links between adult attachment styles within close
relationships, bulimia, dietary restraint, and relationship
satisfaction.
 120 female participants aged between 18 to 45 years were
recruited from the University of Canterbury campus, and
administered three to four brief questionnaires
 Results found that women with bulimia who were currently
involved in romantic relationships were significantly more
anxiously attached, more likely to engage in dieting
behaviour and report low levels of satisfaction within their
relationships
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However there are limitations to this research study:
 This study was only conducted it with female participants
without generalizing it with the wider population
 It was done with a small sample size making the findings
quite limited
 Participant biases and selection affects might have
affected the research
 For example, the researcher approached many potential
participants in a face-to-face manner. Those who refused
participation in this study, may have been
characteristically different from individuals who agreed
to participate.
 Also the relationship process only proves a correlations
and doesn’t conclude the cause. So its not certain that
trying to change your appearance for someone else is the
cause of Bulimia Nervosa!!!
http://thetruthaboutanorexia.blogspot.co.uk/p/the-cognitiveexplanation-of-anorexia.html
https://prezi.com/ckl8sh4m28wz/cognitive-explanations-ofanorexia-nervosa/
http://www.slideshare.net/Resourcd/resourcd-file-18230858
https://revisepsychology.wordpress.com/2012/05/13/7psychological-explanations-for-bulimia-nervosa/
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/35468072.pdf