The disorders are characterized by complex and multifactorial etiology.
Experimental and prospective data suggest that cultural patterns influence body image. That is, they make the alteration of eating behavior more likely through two main processes. 1) the internalization of the ideal of thinness and 2) the investment in the body to evaluate oneself.
In our culture, the body and physical appearance represent a fundamental basis by which to evaluate oneself. Self-esteem depends directly on the achievement of certain ideals of beauty and body shape.
The unattainable ideal of thinness that society promotes, however, often generates body dissatisfaction. This in turn promotes unhealthy dietary behaviors, such as restriction of food intake.
Body dissatisfaction in eating disorders
Dissatisfaction with your body can foster negative feelings such as anxiety , shame, and sadness .
In research on the onset and maintenance of eating disorders, some factors are traditionally considered such as:
- dissatisfaction with the body
- the internalization of the ideal of thinness
- the diet
- negative affect (anxiety, sadness and shame)
Recent longitudinal studies have investigated how the self-objectification factor can predict the onset and maintenance of eating disorders in women.
But what is meant by self-objectification?
It is the tendency to experience one’s body from the perspective of an outside observer. Thus, self-objectification describes a particular perspective on the body self. A form of self-awareness characterized by the habitual monitoring of the body and its constant thinking in terms of appearance (Riva et al., 2015).
In a longitudinal study on 2700 girls (Dakanalis et al., 2017) it emerged that self-objectification is the factor that most predicts the onset of eating disorders in girls . Its predictive power appears to be double body dissatisfaction and three times being on a diet.
These results are increasingly driving research into the prevention and treatment of eating disorders .
Studies show a direct link between eating disorder symptoms and self-objectification, body monitoring and internalization of certain socio-cultural standards of beauty.
But if all women are exposed to certain patterns of beauty, why do only a small part develop an eating disorder?
Riva along with other researchers, tried to answer this question by linking the theory of self-objectification with the hypothesis of the allocentric block. He suggested that eating disorders have a negative allocentric image of one’s body as an antecedent. In other words, it cannot be updated by the egocentric sensorial contribution of perception.
- The egocentric perspective is what allows us to see objects in relation to ourselves: the position of an object changes when we move. This egocentric representation is mainly used in direct motor activity in space such as grasping or reaching for an object.
- In the allocentric perspective, on the contrary, the object is represented independently of our relationship with it. In reference to the body it is the third person perspective, in the mirror. Interestingly, anxious individuals (for example, those suffering from social anxiety ) are also more inclined to remember events from an allocentric perspective.
An example of an allocentric representation of the body is: ” I look from the outside to my fat body in front of a person who teases me “.
Studies on the allocentric perspective in eating disorders
Recent research on spatial memory has shown that these two perspectives (egocentric and allocentric) have an influence on how memories are stored and retrieved.
Riva suggests that a woman can internalize an objectified self-image when she uses an allocentric perspective (observer mode) to remember events in which she evaluates herself based on bodily appearance.
This allocentric self-memory can have a major behavioral impact. The woman initiates new behaviors to counter the negative contents of her objectified body. One of these can be food control or restriction which, however, is not effective in modifying the objectified self.
To change the allocentric memory of the fat body, the content must be transformed to an egocentric format. This is to allow comparison with perceptual data.
According to Byrne and other colleagues, the Papez circuit transforms allocentric content into an egocentric format. Thanks to this transformation, new perceptual data ( thin body ) update the content of the objectified personal memory (“ now I’m thin” ).
If this transformation turns out to be compromised, the subject is stuck in a negative self-memory. Perception is unable to update even after a diet and significant weight loss.
Allocentric block and eating disorder
The allocentric block hypothesis suggests that people with eating disorders are stuck in an objectified negative body memory (represented from the outside, like in a mirror). This would no longer be updated by contrasting, perception-driven egocentric representations ( I feel fatter than I am ).
Therefore, there appears to be an inability to properly integrate egocentric and allocentric information.
Eating disorders and virtual reality
Recent studies are aimed at evaluating how virtual reality can be used for the treatment of eating disorders, specifically in correcting this sensorial integration error.
For now, these are only preliminary studies or single case studies. However, the results seem to show that the experience of a virtual body modifies the distortions in multisensory integration.
A recent preliminary study on 23 people suffering from anorexia nervosa, shows that a single session of body swapping (a new virtual body experience) is sufficient to produce a significant reduction in body distortion (Serino et al., 2017).
Despite the encouraging results of the studies, the use of virtual reality is still far from being easily usable in the clinic. This is due to the high costs of the helmets, visors and software required for the sessions and the difficulty of using the necessary equipment.
