The Cognitive Explanation of Anorexia


The cognitive explanation of Anorexia Nervosa states that the disorder is a result of defective and maladaptive thought processes. Often sufferers of Anorexia Nervosa have misperceptions of their body and have flawed reasoning behind their eating habits about themselves and their body.

Faulty thinking may either be distortions to thinking or errors in thinking. Typical distortions to thinking include:

  • misperceptionsof the body as being overweight when it is in fact under weight
  • basing feelings of self worth on self appearance
  • using eating,  or other symptoms of anorexia nervosa,  as a basis for self control
  • making flawed beliefs about eating and dieting behaviour
  • Typical errors in thinking are that a sufferer takes a certain approach to their thinking.
Examples of errors in thinking are:
  • All or nothing thinking – e.g. “I ate one piece of chocolate ... I ruined all my hard work!
  • Overgeneralising – e.g. “I’ll fail in life if I cannot control my eating habits”
  • Magnification or minimising – e.g. “My weight loss isn’t serious”
  • Magical thinking – e.g. “ My life would be perfect if I was a size 6




Evidence for the Cognitive Explanation

  • Fallon and Rozin (1985) showed male and female student participants a series of silhouette pictures of body shapes increasing in size and asked them to rate: their current body shape, their ideal body shape and the body shape that they thought the opposite sex would find most attractive. Fallon and Rozin found that men rated their ‘current’ and ‘ideal’ body shapes as being close together but rated their ‘attractive’ as being smaller than this, so their ideal was heavier than what they thought women found attractive. However, women tend to rate what they saw as ‘attractive’ to their opposite sex as significantly smaller then their ‘current’ body shape and their ‘ideal’  body shape as being significantly smaller than both.
  • MacKenzie et al (1993) interviewed female eating disorder patients, along with a control group, about their body weight, shape and ideals. They were also asked to estimate their own size in relation to other women. MacKenzie et al found that when asked to compare themselves to the controls (who were the same size), the patients tended to overestimate their body weight. They also found that when asked to indicate their ideal body shape/weight, the patients chose a weight significantly thinner/lighter than what the control group chose. The participants were given a chocolate bar and soft drink to consume, then following this they were asked to re-estimate their body weight/shape. Whilst the control group judged that their size had not changed, the patients judged an increase in their body weight/shape.


Evaluation of the Cognitive Explanation


  • The cognitive explanation provides a good account of what can help to maintain an eating disorder, such as anorexia, but not what causes them in the first place as other factors may trigger the disorder which then results in misperceptions in the sufferer’s thinking processe
  • An ethical issue with the cognitive explanation of anorexia is that by stating the cause of psychological problems is in faulty thinking processes, the explanation sometimes blames the sufferer - for example, a person may suffer with anorexia as a result of extreme trauma, however the cognitive explanation suggests the problem is due to their perceptions of themselves and their eating habits
  • People who are clinically ‘normal’ also think irrationally - so whats the difference between ‘normal’ people who think irrationally and sufferers of anorexia?
  • The cognitive explanation states the obvious, in this case that people who suffer with anorexia see themselves as overweight when they are under weight
  • Women are generally more dissatisfied with their bodies more than men are, however, not all women develop eating disorders, such as anorexia




By Sarah Manifold

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