Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Psychological Causes of Bulimia
- Behavioural explanations - AO1
- Social Learning Theory
(SLT) - imitating our role
models (e.g. skinny
models/actresses)
- Operant
conditioning -
praise/feeling good
about weight loss,
acting as a
reinforcement
- Who's vulnerable? -
people with low
self-esteem,
perfectionists (OCD),
high social anxiety,
impulsive, controlling
parents
- Behavioural explanations - AO2
- Groez et al (2002)
- Meta-review of 25 studies.
- Found a positive
correlation between
dissatisfaction and
exposure to media
images
- Becker et al (2002)
- Study done in Fiji
(cross-cultural)
- Found ED's didn't exist in
Fiji until TV
- Five years after,
numbers of both AN
and BN sufferers rose
- Cognitive - AO1
- Coopers Model
- Most people with
BN have suffered
an early traumatic
experience
- Because of this
they feel worthless
- As they grow up they are
extra sensitive to
comments about
themselves or media
images
- They learn
that fat =
bad, thin =
good and
begin to
diet
- They believe loosing weight
will result in others liking
them
- The maintenance cycle
- Person is feeling low so binge to feel better
- Start to worry about getting fat so purge
- Causes them to feel worthless, causing the cycle to repeat.
- Polivy
- BN sufferers have poor
self-image, causing
stress
- Binge eating is a way of coping with this
- Sufferers can blame their
poor self-image on the
binging, rather than their
problems
- An avoidance tactic
- Cognitive - AO2
- Cooper evidence - Leung et al
- Lack of parental
bonding was
linked to
dis-functional
beliefs among BN
sufferes
- These have been
linked to binging and
purging in other
studies.
- Polivy evidence
- Studied the effects of stress on dieters
- Compared
non-stressed to
stressed, and found
stressed ate more
food
- Supports binge eating
being not about a desire
for food, but a coping
mechanism of stress