The relationship between Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) factors and two separate measures of body image-estimation of body size and subjective report of distorted bodily experiences-was investigated using multivariate analyses in adolescent females with anorexia nervosa. A canonical correlational analysis of these data indicated the presence of two orthogonal dimensions defining the relation between personality and body image scores. In the first canonical variate, size overestimation and subjective body image distortion were both associated with MMPI scales reflecting somatization, anxiety, and atypical thinking; in the second variate, size overestimation alone was found to be associated with introversion and depression, while subjective body image distortion aligned with somatization and atypical thinking. The results suggest that different measures of body image disturbance are associated with different personality characteristics. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of personality factors in the pathogenesis of body image disturbances in anorexia nervosa.
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Michael A. Strober (1981) studied this question.