Bodily Guilt and Shame Mediate the Link Between Maternal Body Influence and Dietary Restraint

• In Event: Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Topic - Health, Growth, Injury

Abstract

Dietary restraint refers to consistent, intentional restricting of food intake despite physiological cues such as hunger (Angle et al., 2009). Previous studies demonstrate that restrained eating is associated with adolescent reports of parental weight teasing, especially for those who are not overweight (Goldfield et al., 2010). However, little research has examined processes that account for this relationship. Negative emotions about one’s body could potentially explain this relationship since dietary restraint has been linked to higher body dissatisfaction in young adult women (Compeau & Ambwani, 2013). Therefore, the current study investigates whether higher bodily guilt, higher bodily shame, and lower body satisfaction mediate the relationship between receiving comments about weight or eating from mothers during adolescence and restrained eating in young adult women.

Participants were 153 female college students (Mage = 19.2, SD = 1.5) with diverse body shapes (MBMI = 24.4, SD = 5.4) from a southern U.S. university. To measure maternal body influence, participants indicated the extent to which they received comments from their mothers about their weight and/or eating habits during their adolescence using an adapted version of the Direct Influence subscale of the Parental Influence Questionnaire (Abraczinskas et al., 2012). Participants also reported their level of dietary restraint using the Cognitive Restraint subscale of the Three-Factor Questionnaire-R21 (Cappelleri et al., 2009). Internal bodily shame and bodily guilt were measured using an adapted version of the State Shame and Guilt Scale (Marschall et al., 1994) while external bodily shame was measured using an adapted version of the modified Other As Shamer Scale (Matos et al., 2015) and body satisfaction was measured using the Body Image States Scale (Cash et al., 2002). Finally, perceived shape was measured on a scale from 1 to 7, where 4 represented an average shape. All scales demonstrated good reliability, with alpha’s between .83 and .94.

Confirming previous findings, a regression revealed that perceived body shape moderates the relationship between maternal body influence during adolescence and dietary restraint (see Figure 1). According to the Johnson-Neyman region of significance, this relationship was significant for those with a perceived body shape below a score of 5.19; therefore, a parallel mediation model was run that only included those who perceive their shape to be a score of 5, or slightly overweight),and below (N = 138). Figure 2 shows the significance of mediators; only bodily guilt and internal bodily shame were found to partially mediate this relationship. In addition, maternal influence has significant indirect effects on dietary restraint through bodily guilt and internal bodily shame such that more guilt and shame predict more restraint.

Results indicate that higher bodily guilt and internal bodily shame partially mediate the positive relationship between maternal body influence and dietary restraint for those do not perceive themselves to be more than slightly overweight. This study contributes to the field of research demonstrating that parental influence during adolescence has long-lasting impacts on the eating behaviors of their adult children. Future research should explore whether guilt-based dietary restraint is more adaptive than shame-based dietary restraint.

Authors

• Savannah R Flak, University of South Florida St. Petersburg
  Presenting Author

• Jordan Elizabeth Cooper, University of South Florida
  Non-Presenting Author

• Wendy M Rote, University of South Florida
  Non-Presenting Author