These tools will no longer be maintained as of December 31, 2024. Archived website can be found here. PubMed4Hh GitHub repository can be found here. Contact NLM Customer Service if you have questions.


Pubmed for Handhelds

PUBMED FOR HANDHELDS

Search MEDLINE/PubMed

  • Title: The meaning of beauty: implicit and explicit self-esteem and attractiveness beliefs in body dysmorphic disorder.
    Author: Buhlmann U, Teachman BA, Naumann E, Fehlinger T, Rief W.
    Journal: J Anxiety Disord; 2009 Jun; 23(5):694-702. PubMed ID: 19278822.
    Abstract:
    Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is characterized by imagined or slight defects in one's appearance. We evaluated implicit and explicit biases among individuals diagnosed with BDD (n=21), individuals with subclinical BDD symptoms (n=21), and healthy control participants (n=21). Specifically, we used the Implicit Association Test [IAT; Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: the implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1464-1480] to examine automatic associations related to self-esteem, associations between attractive and important, and a physical attractiveness stereotype (associations between attractive and competent). BDD participants had significantly lower implicit self-esteem, relative to control participants, and the subclinical BDD participants were intermediate between these groups. Although no group differences were observed on the implicit Attractive Important IAT; as predicted, BDD participants had significantly stronger implicit associations between attractive and competent than the other groups, in line with a common stereotype about physical attractiveness. Both the Attractive Competent IAT and Self-Esteem IAT were significant predictors of BDD symptom severity, and distress and avoidance during a mirror exposure task. Findings are discussed in light of cognitive-behavioral models of BDD.
    [Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]