The influence of gender on the evaluation of anorexia nervosa

A stereotype exists that anorexia nervosa (AN) is a "female" disorder. As a result, men with AN may face harsher stigmatization from their peers or go undiagnosed. The shifting standards model provides a framework to explore how gender stereotypes impact perceptions of AN. Participants (N = 438) were given a vignette of a person with symptoms of AN labeled as either male or female. Assessments were experimentally manipulated according to the shifting standards perspective: participants were asked if they were concerned (or convinced) that the target had AN and then indicated the severity of behavioral symptoms (calorie reduction, pounds lost per week, and hours of exercise) needed to make them concerned (or convinced) of AN. Participants were more likely to state that the male target had AN compared to the female target (p = .036) whereas women were more likely to believe an individual had AN than men, regardless of the target gender (p < .001). In addition, men required that the male target have more severe symptoms to assign an AN diagnosis than women (p = .005). In general, severity ratings for symptoms were quite high, indicating a normalization of unhealthy weight loss practices. These results confirm that gender affects the perception of AN, though they do not conform to expectations within the shifting standards model. Instead, they suggest that a male target is more readily identified as having AN than a female target with AN when exhibiting identical symptoms.