Social Support and Locus of Control in Subclinical Eating-Disorder Tendencies in a Romania-Based Convenience Sample

Subclinical eating-disorder tendencies may reflect early psychological vulnerability before the development of clinically diagnosed eating disorders. Body image concerns, perceived social support, and control-related beliefs are established correlates of eating pathology. However, their joint pattern across several eating-disorder tendency profiles has received less attention in Romanian nonclinical adult samples.

We examined differences in perceived social support, locus of control, and body image concerns among participants with and without subclinical tendencies associated with anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating. We investigated the association between locus of control and body image concerns.

A cross-sectional quantitative design was used. The sample included 108 participants who completed online self-report measures assessing perceived social support, eating-disorder tendencies, body image concerns, and locus of control. Independent-samples t-tests and Welch tests were used for group comparisons. Bonferroni correction was applied within families of comparisons. Effect sizes were reported using Hedges' g. Pearson correlation and simple linear regression were used to examine the association between locus of control and body image concerns.

Body image concerns were significantly higher among participants with anorexic, binge-eating, and bulimic tendencies. Perceived social support was lower among participants with binge-eating and bulimic tendencies, but not among those with anorexic tendencies. Locus of control differed significantly only in the exploratory bulimia comparison after correction. External locus of control was positively associated with body image concerns and explained a small but significant proportion of variance.

Body image concerns emerged as the most consistent correlate of subclinical eating-disorder tendencies. The findings support the relevance of body image, interpersonal resources, and control-related beliefs in early eating-disorder vulnerability.