Dissonance-based Interventions for the Prevention of Eating Disorders: Using Persuasion Principles to Promote Health

Abstract

The limited efficacy of prior eating disorder (ED) prevention programs led to the development of dissonance-based interventions (DBIs) that utilize dissonance-based persuasion principles from social psychology. Although DBIs have been used to change other attitudes and behaviors, only recently have they been applied to ED prevention. This article reviews the theoretical rationale and empirical support for this type of prevention program. Relative to assessment-only controls, DBIs have produced greater reductions in ED risk factors, ED symptoms, future risk for onset of threshold or subthreshold EDs, future risk for obesity onset, and mental health utilization, with some effects persisting through 3-year follow-up. DBIs have also produced significantly stronger effects than alternative interventions for many of these outcomes, though these effects typically fade more quickly. A meta-analysis indicated that the average effects for DBIs were significantly stronger than those for non-DBI ED prevention programs that have been evaluated. DBIs have produced effects when delivered to high-risk samples and unselected samples, as well as in efficacy and effectiveness trials conducted by six independent labs, suggesting that the effects are robust and that DBIs should be considered for the prevention of other problems, such as smoking, substance abuse, HIV, and diabetes care.

The MABIC project: An effectiveness trial for reducing risk factors for eating disorders

“…The intervention was based on the social cognitive model (Levine & Smolak, 2006), the media literacy educational approach (Center for Media Literacy, 2008) and cognitive dissonance theory (Stice, Shaw, Becker, & Rohde, 2008). The intervention has two components ( Table 2).…”

Optimism and College Grades: Predicting GPA From Explanatory Style

“…CHB use is a strategy used to reduce cognitive dissonance, and this reduction is highly motivating (Aronson & Mills, 1959). Thus, training efforts may need to include specific elements of dissonance-based interventions to be effective (Stice, Shaw, Becker, & Rohde, 2008;Stone & Fernandez, 2008). Stone and Focella (2011) argued that confronting individuals with their own hypocrisy in this manner is critical in improving decision-making.…”

‘Blindness to the obvious’? Treatment experiences and feminist approaches to eating disorders

“…The significance of the media in propagating thinness as beauty was certainly here (Orbach, 1986;Wolf, 1991;Bordo, 1993), and a plethora of subsequent ED research has explored the degree to which media constructs are implicated within cultures of body/ eating distress (see summaries in Holstrom, 2004;and Stice et al, 2008). At the same time, the later feminist research has also been wary of overemphasising 'the inscriptive power of cultural images of thinness', or even the characterisation of EDs as 'body image' problems (Malson, 2009, p. 124), and situate anorexia and bulimia as 'graphic cultural statement[s]' about 'the "conditions of being a woman" in contemporary western cultures… and ….…”