Does Body Checking Regulate Emotions? An Experimental Study on Appearance- and Health-Related Body Checking

Body checking (BC) is widespread among healthy populations and in individuals with eating disorders (EDs), body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), and illness anxiety disorder (IAD). Etiological models of these three disorders originate from research on obsessive-compulsive disorder and propose a short-term reduction of negative affect after BC. However, as empirical evidence shows a heterogenous pattern regarding the reduction of negative affect, the primary objective of this study was to test the etiological models in a cross-over laboratory experiment.

After induction of negative affect, N = 102 healthy females underwent a 10-min BC task, in which they were randomly assigned to perform ED-, BDD-, or IAD-related BC, and a 10-min control checking condition of checking the characteristics of two vases. Before and after each task, participants completed state questionnaires on affect and disorder-specific pathology.

The results revealed increased negative affect and disorder-specific pathology from before to after BC, but a reduction of these variables after the control checking condition.

Thus, contrary to expectation, the theory explaining reduced negative affect in compulsive checking may not directly be applicable to ED-, BDD-, and IAD-related BC in healthy populations, thus providing evidence of the dysfunctionality of BC in the short term.