Brittany N. Hurlock, Maya E. Pandey, Brenna K. Ritter, Erin K. Rogers
Disordered eating behaviors can cause mental distress, lead to more severe issues and are prevalent amongst teenagers. There are many underlying reasons as to why people engage in disordered eating behaviors, but prior research suggests that attachment style with parents or peers have been shown to be related to disordered eating behaviors. Other studies have also suggested that body image and how one believes others perceive their body contributes to attachment styles and disordered eating behavior. Through a group of surveys sent out via SONA and social media platforms, this study will explore how attachment and disordered eating are connected through how you think others see you physically and their social influence on your self image. We hypothesize that individuals who report more insecure attachments and higher problematic eating behaviors will report higher scores of body image victimization from peers.
I am also very interested in why it is the parent relationship and not the peer one that is significant. I was under the impression that much of our personality was shaped by our peers, and thus eating behaviors might also be impacted by this relationship. It would be cool to see more studies explaining why the parent relationship is significant .
Agreed! Much of our interest was inspired by how our parents AND peers have affected us. So by seeing that our peer results were not significant as expected was a shock. Professor Bagley had great insight on how peers and parents may have different weightings in our minds and it is hard to take a peer more seriously than family. I would love to see further research done on this.