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Romantic attachment, social support, sexual approach style and sociocultural influences on eating disorder symptoms
Journal of Eating Disorders volume 1, Article number: O27 (2013)
The purpose of this study was to examine the prediction of eating disorder symptoms within an integrated theoretically-driven model of romantic attachment, social support, sexual approach styles and the internalization of the media's portrayal of ideal body standards. A community sample of 671 women aged 19 to 88 years completed a series of self-report questionnaires. The findings supported a mediation model of romantic attachment being associated with eating disorder symptoms through interpersonal factors (perceived social support, game-playing and possessive sexual approach styles), and an environmental factor (the internalization of the media's depiction of ideal body standards). Romantic attachment anxiety predicted eating disorder symptoms directly; however, romantic attachment avoidance did not. Instead it predicted other factors. The findings enhance the understanding of the pathways influencing eating disorder symptoms and indicate that the attachment theory is a valuable framework to integrate the literature regarding sociocultural theory, sexual approach style, social support and eating disorders.
This abstract was presented in the Disordered Eating – Characteristics & Treatment stream of the 2013 ANZAED Conference.
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This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Dean, C., Allen, J.S. & Hughes, E. Romantic attachment, social support, sexual approach style and sociocultural influences on eating disorder symptoms. J Eat Disord 1 (Suppl 1), O27 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1186/2050-2974-1-S1-O27
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/2050-2974-1-S1-O27
Keywords
- Environmental Factor
- Social Support
- Health Promotion
- Disease Prevention
- Eating Disorder