Social physique anxiety and eating attitudes: Moderating effects of body mass and gender

One purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between social physique anxiety and eating attitudes in a university population. A second purpose was to determine if body mass and gender served to moderate social physique anxiety-eating attitude relations. University students (N = 85) completed the Social Physique Anxiety Scale (SPAS; Har et al., 1989), the Eating Attitude Test (EAT; Garner & Garfinkel, 1979) and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (MC-SDS; Reynolds, 1982). A Body Mass Index (BMI) was calculated from the height and weight measurements of the participant. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that, after accounting for social desirability effects, social physique anxiety scores were positively related to disturbed eating attitude scores. In addition, both BMI and gender served to moderate the social physique anxiety-disturbed eating attitudes relationship. More importantly, however, these moderator variables were shown to operate interactively to influence that relationship. That is, relations between social physique anxiety and disturbed eating attitudes were maximized for females with lower BMI scores. Recommendations for future research are discussed.