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Eating disorders are complex mental health conditions that often comprise more than just ‘food’ –outside influences such as family members, role models, and media impact how people perceive themselves. As a result, they affect the development of eating disorders.
Anorexia nervosa is a severe eating disorder that causes a person to maintain a deficient weight by exercising too much or suppressing their diet. People with anorexia often think they are overweight, even though this is not the case.
Albert Bandura proposed the social learning theory (SLT) in 1977. The theory assumes environmental and cognitive factors working together cause behaviour.
This article will describe and evaluate the social learning theory of anorexia nervosa.
The SLT explains that behaviour is a result of:
Environmental factors via operant and classical conditioning techniques, known as observational learning.
Cognitive factors – before individuals learn a new behaviour, they think about whether they want to learn it.
The SLT explains anorexia as follows:
During childhood, children encode the behaviour of their role models (e.g., celebrities or parents), imitating it.
They do not imitate all behaviour, but if it is reinforced, or if it is the generally accepted opinion of society, they are likely to replicate it.
Society and media perceive ‘skinnier’ women and ‘muscular’ men as more attractive.
Behaviours an individual may observe and imitate, and that may cause the onset of anorexia are:
As a result, a person can develop a distorted image of themselves and model the behaviour they observed, causing the onset of anorexia nervosa.
SLT considers both environmental (home) and cognitive factors, Pixabay
As previously stated, the social learning theory considers aspects of the behavioural approach for explaining anorexia nervosa. According to the social learning theory, people can learn anorexia nervosa via associations (principles of classical conditioning). They can then maintain this maladaptive behaviour via reinforcement (principles of operant conditioning).
An example of how classical conditioning explains anorexia in terms of the development of a fear of food is:
The individual may form an association between eating and psychological distress, causing avoidant behaviour and leading to anorexia.
Here are some examples of how operant conditioning may explain anorexia:
Consider the review of multiple studies by Keel and Klump (2003). Here, they found that the role of media influences and culture affects the rate of anorexia nervosa. The research found anorexia nervosa in all countries, but the more Westernised countries had higher rates of anorexia. However, other factors exist, so we can only say that the Western media plays a role and is not the only determining factor.
The cognitive aspect of the SLT theory explains behaviour in terms of faulty schemas and thought processes that lead people to develop maladaptive behaviour. If this behaviour is reinforced via the vicious cycle, it can lead to the onset of anorexia.
While under this psychological pressure, the individual is sensitive and easy to influence.
If someone gives them positive feedback concerning their weight, this encourages them to continue this maladaptive behaviour. If a person starts restrictive eating and does not lose weight, they may receive negative feedback, thus thinking they need to be more stringent. This process results in a vicious cycle and causes the individual to fear food and weight gain, called Beck’s vicious cycle.
Beck’s vicious cycle contributes to the onset and maintenance of anorexia nervosa.
Let us now discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the social learning theory of anorexia.
The strengths of the SLT approach are:
Grabe et al. (2008) found that women exposed to media images about the thin-ideal body had body image concerns.
SLT approach is more holistic because it takes a multifactorial approach (uses more than one approach to explain phenomena) to explain anorexia, i.e., it does not try to over-simplify complex human behaviours. This model demonstrates that individuals genetically predisposed to anorexia (more likely to develop it) develop an eating disorder due to psychological pressures from external forces.
The weaknesses of the SLT approach are:
This model ignores the importance of biological factors leading to the onset of anorexia. For example, Kaye et al., 2015 found that patients with anorexia had high levels of dopamine receptors in the basal ganglia (region of the brain involved in reward processing).
Therefore, dysfunctional eating behaviour may result from dopamine irregularities in the basal ganglia.
Similarly, Kaye et al. (2005) found that serotonin neuronal systems may create vulnerabilities related to pathological feeding and make some individuals more susceptible to developing eating disorders (alongside the environmental stressors).
One problem with this model is that not everyone who has such role models (role models that cause or encourage unhealthy eating behaviours, such as promoting the dieting culture the SLT explains as a possible cause of anorexia) develops anorexia. This idea suggests that the diathesis-stress model may provide a better explanation for anorexia.
The diathesis-stress model is a biopsychosocial model that explains the onset of anorexia. Individuals who develop the eating disorder initially have a genetic predisposition (genes that make them more vulnerable to developing illnesses) to anorexia. Being exposed to enough psychological pressures from external forces triggers these genes.
The theory assumes environmental and cognitive factors that work together cause behaviour.
The role of the media, society’s ‘idealistic’ values of how a person should look like, and role models.
People learn behaviour by:
A limitation of the SLT is that it ignores biological influences that may cause anorexia. The model does not explain why all individuals who have such models do not develop anorexia nervosa.
During childhood, children encode the behaviour of their role models (e.g., celebrities or parents), imitating it. They do not imitate all behaviour, but if it is reinforced, or if it is the generally accepted opinion of society, they are likely to replicate it. As a result, a person can develop a distorted image of themselves and model the behaviour they observed, causing the onset of anorexia nervosa.
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