Social perception in people with eating disorders

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Clinical Psychology
• Psychiatry

Background:

• Social perception, a facet of social cognition, remains under-explored in eating disorders (ED).
• Investigating social perception is crucial for understanding interpersonal difficulties in ED psychopathology.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine social perception in individuals diagnosed with anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN).
• To compare social perception abilities between AN subtypes, BN, and healthy controls (HC).

Main Methods:

• Utilized the Interpersonal Perception Task (IPT-15), an ecologically valid assessment involving video clips of social situations.
• Participants (N=184) included outpatients with AN (restricting [AN-R], binge-purge [AN-BP]) or BN, and 50 HC.
• Assessed participants' ability to interpret non-verbal cues to understand interpersonal dynamics.

Main Results:

• No significant overall differences in social perception (IPT total scores) were found between ED groups and HC.
• A trend towards significance was observed on the Intimacy subscale.
• Healthy controls significantly outperformed AN-R participants in discerning the degree of intimacy between individuals in social scenarios.

Conclusions:

• Social perception abilities are largely preserved across eating disorder diagnoses.
• Individuals with AN-R exhibit specific deficits in perceiving intimacy, potentially linked to reduced relationship experience.
• Further research is warranted to explore other social cognition domains and their connection to EDs.