Personality, self-appraisals, and body conscious emotions as predictors of symptoms of body dysmorphia and restrictive disordered eating

Anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphic disorder are often co-morbid and relate to distortions in the perception of self-appearance. It has been proposed that they should be placed in a new body image disorders category in the DSM. Dimensional perspectives suggest that clinical and sub-clinical manifestations of these psychopathologies reside on the same continuum. We explored the correlates of sub-clinical restrictive disordered eating, and sub-clinical body dysmorphia in 396 participants. Our online study tested how sub-clinical restrictive disordered eating, and body dysmorphia relate to self-perceived attractiveness, self-esteem, body-shame, body-pride, authentic and hubristic pride, and personality as described in revised reinforcement sensitivity theory. Body dysmorphia shared significantly stronger positive correlations than restrictive disordered eating with behavioral inhibition sensitivity, body-shame, and body-guilt, and significantly stronger negative correlations with self-esteem, and self-perceived attractiveness. Restrictive disordered eating and body dysmorphia were negatively correlated with authentic and hubristic pride. Hierarchical regression showed that reinforcement sensitivity explained more variance in body dysmorphia than in restrictive disordered eating (Model 1). Self-esteem and self-perceived attractiveness explained more of the additional variance in body dysmorphia than in restrictive disordered eating (Model 2), as did the addition of body-shame, body-pride, authentic and hubristic pride (Model 3). Sub-clinical restrictive disordered eating and body dysmorphia relate to several constructs that may be important in understanding the development and/or maintenance of two proposed body image disorders: anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphic disorder.