Understanding the Role of Self-Judgment in the Association between Body Dissatisfaction and Quality of Life on Normal-Weight and Overweight Portuguese Women

Abstract

Abstract. Literature has demonstrated the negative impact of body image dissatisfaction on women's quality of life. Nonetheless, it has been suggested that the relationship between body dissatisfaction and women's well-being is not linear, and that the processes that mediate this association remain unclear. This study aims to clarify the mediator role of self-judgment in the association between negative body image and psychological quality of life, in two groups: normal-weight and overweight women. This cross-sectional study comprised 200 normal-weight and 92 overweight female college students, aged between 18 and 24 years old, that completed self-report instruments of body dissatisfaction, self-judgment, and quality of life. Results showed that women who presented harsher self-judgment about their perceived failures tended to present lower levels in all quality of life domains. Also, results from mediation analyses indicated the relationship between body dissatisfaction and psychological quality of life was significantly mediated by the mecha-nisms of self-judgment in the two BMI groups (95% CI [-2.41 to -0.04]; 95% CI [-6.35 to -.89]). This mediational model accounted for 28.3% and 40.7% of psychological quality of life in the normal-weight and overweight groups, respectively. These results suggest that a lower ability to deal with one's failures or inadequacies (e.g., negative evaluation of body image) in a kind and accepting manner may significantly increase the negative impact of body dissatisfaction on one's psychological quality of life. In this way, it seems that, the focus of interventions should go beyond body dissatisfaction and also target the development of adaptive attitudes (opposed to self-critical attitudes) to deal with negative body-related experiences.

Interpersonal difficulties in obesity: A systematic review and meta-analysis to inform a rejection sensitivity-based model

“…Teasing and bullying were investigated among adolescents [35,46,51,55,62] and children [46], whereas perception of interpersonal stress was more often investigated in adult populations [26,48,49,63], than adolescents [56,64] or children [38,50]. Similarly, quality of social life was mostly assessed among adults [44,53,60], with only one study reporting on social functioning in children [46]. The observed effect sizes ranged from moderate to large in each comparison and the pattern of findings was consistent through the studies included in the meta-analyses as well as those included in the systematic review.…”

“…Details of mean age or age range of samples tested in the studies are included in Table 2. Twenty-three studies had a mixed sample of males and females [26, 34-40, 42, 43, 46, 47, 50, 51, 54-59, 61-63] and nine studies included only females [41,44,45,48,49,52,53,60,64].…”

“…Based on the goals of this work, three different meta-analyses were calculated. The first meta-analysis summarised data on frequency of lifetime events of teasing or bullying [31,42,47,52,59]; the second meta-analysis included measures of interpersonal sensitivity or reactivity to interpersonal stress [26, 38, 48-50, 56, 63, 64] and the third meta-analysis included measures of perceived quality of social relationships [44,46,53,54]. Data from females only were used for studies that reported data for both genders.…”

Composition and Factorial Invariance for the Assessment of Body Image Dissatisfaction Questionnaire in Mexican Adolescents

“…It is also essential to ascertain whether the questionnaire is useful, for example, in predicting low self-esteem, risk of eating disorders and adherence to starting and maintaining an active behavior. Since the development of body image constitutes one of the most important psychological experiences for the human being, associated with the quality of life [ 45 ] and human health [ 46 ], there is a need to valid and reliable instruments for its assessment. For this reason, the present study analyzed the psychometric properties proposed by Solano-Pinto and Cano-Vindel [ 20 ] for the IMAGEN questionnaire.…”

Finding kindness: A randomized controlled trial of an online self‐compassion intervention for weight management (SC4WM)

“…Excess weight can also increase the severity of respiratory infections, including coronavirus‐19 (COVID‐19) (Kwok et al, 2020). Body weight is negatively associated with emotional well‐being, body image appraisals and health‐related quality of life (Ferreira et al, 2016; Kolotkin & Andersen, 2017) and is linked with greater depression and anxiety (Avila et al, 2015). Individuals who lack self‐compassion in the context of weight management could experience harsher self‐judgement, isolation and overidentify with the challenges they face (Brenton‐Peters, Vallis, et al, 2022; Neff, 2023).…”