Stereotype versus reality

It is unclear whether sex and race differences in the prevalence of eating disorders reflect true variation in risk for eating pathology or under-diagnosis of disordered eating among stereotype-incongruent groups. This thesis comprises three studies examining this issue. The first study investigated the effects of puberty and race on girls' awareness and internalization of the thin ideal. It was found that ethnic minority girls were equally aware of and expressed greater internalization of the cultural thin ideal compared to White girls. This result is somewhat puzzling because previous research suggests that internalization of the thin ideal is associated with the development of eating pathology but that eating disorders are less prevalent among ethnic minority women. The results of the second study presented may help to understand this apparent paradox. This study examined explicit and implicit weight attitudes and weight identity in a White and a Black population of normal weight and overweight men and women. Data revealed that Black participants self-reported a thinner weight identity compared to White participants even after controlling for differences in body size. Thus, although Black women may internalize the cultural thin ideal, the potential negative impact of this may be offset by their tendency to view themselves as thinner than White women. The third study presented investigated whether race and sex differences in eating disorder prevalence may be due in part to physicians' failure to detect these symptoms in stereotype-incongruent populations. Physicians were asked to read a fictional student diary and indicate what from what problems they thought the student suffered. The sex and race of the fictional student were experimentally manipulated. Results provided evidence that eating disorder symptoms in Black men and women and in White men may go unrecognized by physicians due to race- and sex-based stereotypes of who suffers from an eating disorder. Thus, the results of these three studies together suggest that sex and race differences in the prevalence of eating disorders are likely due to a combination of both true differences in eating disorder symptomatology and to under-diagnosis of these symptoms in stereotype-incongruent groups.