Over or Under? Mental Representations and the Paradox of Body Size Estimation

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Kevin R. Brooks¹  Richard J. Stevenson¹  Ian D. Stephen¹ 

[1] Body Image & Ingestion Group (BIIG), Faculty of Medicine, Health & Human Sciences, School of Psychological Sciences, Macquarie University;Perception in Action Research Centre (PARC), Faculty of Medicine, Health & Human Sciences, Macquarie University

关键词: adaptation;    eating disorders;    body size estimation;    body size and shape misperception;    body representation;    aftereffects;    body image;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2021.706313

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

In an early body size estimation study, Garner et al. (1976) asked participants with anorexia nervosato adjust the width of an on-screen photo of their own body until it appeared to match their normalsize. When participants chose larger-than-veridical bodies as matches, Garner et al. described this asa perceptual overestimation of body size. Forty years later, in an attempt to provide an experimentalmodel of these perceptual experiences, Brooks et al. (2016) exposed participants to photos of thinbodies, simulating the media’s portrayal of “thin ideal” figures that have often been blamed forbody image distortion (Bruch, 1978). Subsequently, subjects judged the perceived size of photos ofthemselves that had been manipulated to look larger or smaller. Although subjects judged smallerthan-veridical bodies to be the most accurate, this was also described as an overestimation of bodysize. These studies have been replicated many times, with researchers falling into two camps. Forevidence of perceptual overestimation, those with a background in clinical psychology point tothe selection of larger matching bodies (Slade, 1985; Cash and Deagle, 1997; Farrell et al., 2005;Gardner and Brown, 2014; Mölbert et al., 2017), while experts in perception offer examples ofsmaller matching bodies (Winkler and Rhodes, 2005; Glauert et al., 2009; Hummel et al., 2012a,b;Mohr et al., 2016; Stephen et al., 2016, 2018; Ambroziak et al., 2019; Bould et al., 2020; Zopf et al.,2021). How can these opposite patterns of results be described using the same terminology? Thisapparent paradox can be explained by considering the traditions of the different sub-disciplinesof psychology: their assumptions, definitions, and the details of the underlying models of bodyperception that they employ.

【 授权许可】

CC BY