Associations between appearance-related self-discrepancies and young women's and men's affect, body satisfaction, and emotional eating: a comparison of fixed-item and participant-generated self-discrepancies.

Dittmar, Helga; Halliwell, Emma

Abstract

This study examines the associations between appearance-related, actual-ideal self-discrepancies--from both own and romantic partner's standpoints--and negative affect, body satisfaction, and eating behavior. It extends previous research through studying both genders and the romantic partner standpoint, but its main novel contribution is a systematic comparison between idiographic, participant-generated, and nomothetic, fixed-item measures of appearance-related self-discrepancies. The findings show that these measures cannot be, and should not be, treated as equivalent. The idiographic measures were superior in predicting outcome variables when considering the own standpoint. Nomothetic measures did demonstrate some gender-specific associations, but only from the romantic partner standpoint, and only for women. These findings can be explained with respect to the assessment of accessible, versus available, self-discrepancies. Implications for self-discrepancy and body image theory and research are discussed.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2006
• Journal: Personality and social psychology bulletin
• Print ISSN: 0146-1672
• Electronic ISSN: 1552-7433
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 32
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 447-458
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167205284005
• Keywords: self-discrepancies, self-discrepancy measurement, body image, gender differences, self-standpoints
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1039839
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167205284005
• Additional Information: Additional Information : This paper demonstrates the importance of idiographic participant-generated measures of appearance-related self discrepancies in research into body image and emotional eating. It extends previous research by studying both genders and draws attention to the importance of further theorising and research.