From Self-Esteem to Symptoms: A Potential Role for Difficulties Accessing Internal States and Body-Checking Behavior...

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Eating Disorder Research
• Social Psychology

Background:

• The Seeking Proxies for Internal States (SPIS) model posits that individuals may use external cues, like body appearance, to gauge internal states.
• Difficulties in Accessing Internal States (DAIS) represent challenges in recognizing and understanding one's own emotions and internal experiences.
• Disordered Eating Patterns (DEP) encompass a range of abnormal eating behaviors and cognitions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the statistical associations between self-esteem, DAIS, body-checking, and DEP.
• To examine the mediating roles of DAIS and body-checking in the relationship between state self-esteem and DEP.
• To test a serial mediation model within the SPIS framework.

Main Methods:

• Cross-sectional study involving 200 adult participants recruited via Prolific Academic.
• Statistical analysis using Hayes' PROCESS macro to test mediation models.
• Examination of simple and serial mediation pathways between self-esteem, DAIS, body-checking, and DEP.

Main Results:

• Lower self-esteem was significantly associated with higher levels of DEP.
• Both DAIS and body-checking were found to statistically mediate the association between self-esteem and DEP.
• A significant serial mediation pathway was identified: self-esteem → DAIS → body-checking → DEP.

Conclusions:

• The findings support a conceptual process where difficulties in accessing internal states and subsequent body-checking behaviors may link lower self-esteem to disordered eating patterns.
• While causality cannot be inferred from the cross-sectional design, the results are consistent with the proposed SPIS model.
• The study highlights the relevance of the SPIS framework for understanding dimensional aspects of eating-related phenomena in nonclinical populations.