Absence of Subliminal Body-Image Priming Effects in Anorexia Nervosa

Sociocultural and cognitive-neurobiological accounts suggest that automatic processing of body-related cues may contribute to distorted body representation in anorexia nervosa (AN). This study tested whether subliminally presented body-image cues modulate explicit evaluations of normal-weight female bodies in women with AN compared to healthy controls (HC).

Seventy-eight women (41 AN, 37 HC) completed a subliminal priming task in which normal-weight female bodies were rated for attractiveness, desirability, and perceived normality following subliminal primes depicting bodies from different weight categories. Priming effects were indexed using bias scores (calculated as differences between ratings following normal-weight versus other prime categories) and complemented by analyses of absolute target ratings. Data were analyzed using mixed-design analyses of variance (ANOVAs) with Group and Prime Category as factors. Prime awareness was assessed using a detection task to ensure subliminal presentation.

Across all rating dimensions, the analyses revealed no significant main effect of Group and no Group × Prime Category interaction, indicating that subliminal primes did not modulate evaluations of normal-weight bodies. In contrast, absolute ratings revealed robust main effects of group, with participants with AN providing consistently more negative evaluations than HC across all prime conditions. However, effect sizes for priming effects were small.

The findings suggest that explicit body-related evaluations in AN reflect globally shifted evaluative baselines that operate largely independently of brief subliminally presented cues. These results delineate boundary conditions for subliminal priming effects and highlight the stability of body-related evaluative processes in AN.