Non Biological explanation for Anorexia

Question 1

Body Schemas

Answer 1

• Everyone has schemas of their body, and it is constantly updated to fit our body size and shape
• However people with AN have a distorted body schema, even though they lost a lot of weight their schema has not updated, therefore perceiving their bodies as a larger previous size
• This faulty perception of themselves can lead to AN patients not realizing the seriousness of their low body weight or they might continue to try lose weight

Question 2

Irrational Beliefs

Answer 2

• AN patients behave the way they do due to irrational beliefs
• This is known as black or white thinking as it contributes to perfectionist tendencies as it causes you to believe that something is either completely right or completely wrong
• AN patients may believe that they must be as slim as possible

Question 3

Catastrophizing

Answer 3

• Putting the worst possible interpretation on anything, even if it’s not important
• AN patients may believe that everyone makes fun for them for not being thin

Question 4

Strength of Non Biological Explanation for AN
(2)

Answer 4

• One strength is that Guardia found that AN patients have difficulties in self-perception accuracy
• 25 AN patients found it difficult to gauge their own body size and misjudged their ability to fit through a door frame
• However, they didn’t find it difficult to predict whether the researcher could fit through the door frame
• This suggests that AN patient have not updated their body schema, leading to a less accurate representation of their body
• Another strength is that therapies that have been based on a cognitive approach such as CBT is able to change the cognition of AN patients thinking
• Pike et al found that in 33% of patients observed the relapse rate of those in CBT-E was 22% compared to those in nutritional counselling which was 73%
• This demonstrates that the cognitive approach has been successful in helping AN patients

Question 5

Weakness of Non Biological explanation for AN

Answer 5

• One weakness is that Cornelissen et al found that AN don’t have an issue with body perception
• A ‘morphing’ study was done in which 30 women with AN and 137 control women, who altered a photograph of themselves to estimate their actual body size
• This manipulation showed that there was no significant difference in the manipulation in the showed no significant difference in the manipulation in the photographs between the 2 groups
• This suggests that AN influence on self perception is not excessive, and questions the role of body image distortion as a cause of AN