Transcript Developmental models of eating behaviour

EATING BEHAVIOUR
What is a healthy diet?
• basic constituents: carbohydrate, protein and fat
How does diet affect health
• Diet and illness onset
• Diet and treating illness
Developmental models of eating behaviour
• emphasizes the importance of learning and
experience and focuses on the development
of food preferences in childhood
• the development of food preferences can be
understood in terms of exposure, social
learning and associative learning.
1. Exposure
• Human beings need to consume a variety of
foods in order to have a balanced diet and
neophobia
• Neophobia: males > females, to run in families,
toddlers, pre-school children and adults
• Research  mere exposure to novel foods can
change children’s preferences
• impact of exposure is the ‘learned safety’ view 
preference increases because eating the food has
not resulted in any negative consequences.
2. Social learning
• describes the impact of observing other people’s
behaviour on one’s own behaviour and is sometimes
referred to as ‘modelling’ or ‘observational learning’.
• Parental – media (television and food advertising)
3. Associative learning
• refers to the impact of contingent factors on
behaviour
– Rewarding eating behaviour
– Food as the reward
– Food and control
– Food and physiological consequences
Cognitive models of eating behaviour
• Research  important role for attitudes towards a
food and a role for an individual’s beliefs about
behavioural control
• There is no evidence for either social norms or other
hypothesized variables.
1. The meaning of food and weight
• food is associated with many meanings such as a
treat, a celebration, the forbidden fruit, a family gettogether, being a good mother-child
• food can change the body’s weight and shape,
meanings such as attractiveness, control and success
• Women show weight concern in the form of body
dissatisfaction  dieting
Body Dissatisfaction
can be conceptualized as
• a discrepancy between individuals perception
of their body size and their real body size
• a discrepancy between their perception of
their actual shape and their ideal shape
The causes of body dissatisfaction
1. Social factors
2. Psychological factors
Social factors
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The role of the media
Ethnicity
Social class
The family
Psychological factors
• Beliefs
– Competitiveness
– Achievement
– Material success
– The role of women stereotypes of beauty
– The child–parent relationship
Dieting
• Body dissatisfaction is consistently related to dieting
and attempting to eat less
• Dieters show signs of both undereating and overeating.
The causes of overeating
The causes of overeating
1. The causal analysis of overeating
Herman and Polivy:
• ‘restraint not only precedes overeating but
contributes to it causally’
2. The boundary model of overeating
• an integration of physiological and cognitive
perspectives on food intake
3. Cognitive shifts
• a breakdown in the dieter’s selfcontrol
reflecting a ‘motivational collapse’
4. Mood modification
• in response to lowered mood
5. The role of denial
• thought suppression and thought control can have
the paradoxical effect of making the thoughts that
the individual is trying to suppress more salient
6. Escape theory
• overeating as a consequence of ‘a motivated
shift to low levels of self-awareness’
7. Overeating as a relapse
8. The role of control
the women described their dieting behaviour in
terms of the impact on
• their family life
• a preoccupation with food and weight
• changes in mood
Thank You
Reference: Health Psychology A Textbook, 4th
edition, Jane Ogden